At its Zhovhe Farm 83km west of Beitbridge town, new citrus producer Top Pick Investments will plant 277,000 orange trees by the end of next year. The company has so far planted orange trees of the Ben Valencia, Midnight, and Teddy varieties on 400 hectares, with land preparations already underway on another 200 hectares.
Zhovhe Farm manager Mthulisi Sibanda said they were targeting to plant oranges on at least 1000 hectares by the end of next year. "We are hard at work on the ground and in the last 10 months, we managed to plant no 800 orange trees on 400 hectares," he said.
"At the moment, we are working on land preparations on another 200 hectares and we expect to have imported 60,000 propagating seed from South Africa by the end of April. In our nursery we currently have 10,000 trees. The citrus propagating material is being imported in batches from South Africa."
The new pipeline from Zhovhe Dam was meant to boost irrigation development at the high integrated farm, which has horticulture crops, livestock and fisheries production.
Source: herald.co.zw
