The fact that the market is taking all the avocado production in the world - even the fruit of irregular quality - is good for producers, as it opens up the possibilities for Peru to distinguish itself with a good quality product, said Gonzalo Allendes, Corporate technical director of AGQ Labs (Chile).
The specialist, who was in Peru to participate in Siagro Sur 2017 developed in Ica, said he had the opportunity of trying out some very good quality Peruvian fruit in Spain, but also another fruit that was not up to the standard. In that sense, he gave as an example the work of Chile, a country that since the 1990s has marked a difference with the Avocado Committee, which allowed it to work on the product's uniformity and achieve a standard that is now recognized in the markets.
"I have toured several countries and many people have told me that the Chilean avocado has a significant difference in quality and people look for it because it has achieved that. When an industry offers you the same product, the same container, exceptional quality for a very long time, you continue buying their product," he said.
Today, as the market is eager to consume avocado and is buying all the existing production, the specialist sees an opportunity for countries like Peru to become entrenched in the international market by focusing on productivity as a country, with a uniform quality.
"If you do not have uniformity in the plantations you will have weak trees that produce a bad kind of fruit quality and you will also have other healthy trees that produce good quality fruit, but everything will be placed in the same boxes. You can have 100 fruits of excellent quality and one or two that are not good, and the person that receives the box will think that the whole box is bad. You have to remove the 'rotten apples' from the box. This job can be done at the orchards. If things are done well at the orchards, looking for quality and productivity, things will work out better," he said.
Allendes has toured plantations in Peru on several occasions and acknowledges that the country has grown a lot, but believes that there still are many opportunities because there are those who do things well and others who don't, just like in the rest of the world. "I see progress, they have outstanding matters and conditions to flourish, the issue is how long they will take to achieve it, 5, 10, 15 years ... the world wants to avocado, everyone likes them. Currently nobody is bothered by quality, but let's always take out a consistent quality product," he said.
From his point of view, the Peruvian fruit of June, and especially of the south, is the one that has the most chances. "The fruit of the south has better quality than that of the north, in tropical climates the fruit grows very fast and that works against its quality, but there is a range of possibilities, Trujillo to the south has the potential to make quality fruit," he said.
Finally, he said it was very difficult to surpass Mexico's leadership as a producing country, as it accounts for 60 to 70% of avocado production and has an average of 150 to 170 thousand hectares of crops that no one can surpass. "However, I do believe we can have good producers in the counter season; in that sense, Chile and Peru complement each other rather well, they must always offer the same product, they are complementary, not competitors," he said.
Source: agraria.pe