Putting aside their medical careers, a young couple from Gia Lai built a greenhouse to grow purple passion fruit, which can be harvested all year round.

From doctor to "female farmer 4.0"

Before becoming involved with passion fruit, Ms. Le Thi Bao Tram was a doctor. Stemming from the desire to find a more sustainable direction in agriculture, she and her husband started growing passion fruit.

Ms. Le Thi Bao Tram - Director of 360 High-Tech Agricultural Cooperative (Trang commune, Dak Doa district, Gia Lai province).

Ms. Tram shared that since 2016, she and her husband started growing passion fruit outdoors in the usual way. However, this model quickly revealed its limitations when encountering pests, weather effects and unstable output.

After a period of learning, Ms. Tram decided to change her farming method. In 2018, Ms. Tram boldly brought passion fruit trees into greenhouses.

Initially, the couple tested on an area of ​​140 square meters, a decision that her family objected to and many people did not believe would be successful.

At first, she imported passion fruit seeds from Taiwan, but the seeds did not meet her expectations, the plants grew unevenly, and the yield was low. After selection, she only kept the 5 best seedlings for propagation and continued to cultivate them until now.

Growing in a greenhouse helps passion fruit plants limit pests and diseases, maintain humidity to help the plants grow and develop, and produce much higher yields than conventional farming.

"When we started building a greenhouse, everything was new. My husband and I had to learn and research everything from planting methods to operating the technological system. My husband even made the machines himself, and I learned programming to control them," Ms. Tram shared.

After two years of perseverance, the first high-quality passion fruits were born, opening up a promising direction. When the model developed stably, the couple decided to expand the scale and establish a cooperative.

High technology applications

Currently, the 360 ​​High-Tech Agricultural Cooperative with 7 members (Trang commune, Dak Doa district, Gia Lai province) has a total area of ​​over 1 hectare with two areas: the primary garden and the passion fruit export production garden.

The primary garden specializes in growing seedlings and experiments, while the production garden supplies standard passion fruit to the international market.

Cooperative members are spraying mist to clean dust from leaves, helping the leaves photosynthesize better.

The greenhouse system is equipped with a misting machine to reduce heat, a nutrient regulator, and a drip irrigation system – all of which were researched and manufactured by the couple themselves. Thanks to this, passion fruit is cared for in a closed process, limiting pests and diseases without the use of pesticides, meeting strict European standards.

"To be successful, you must understand what the plants need. When it's sunny, you have to take care of them differently, when it's rainy, you have to take care of them differently. Growing in a greenhouse is not simple, you need to monitor every little change in the plants to make timely adjustments," Ms. Tram emphasized.

Compared to the outdoor passion fruit growing model, investing in a greenhouse costs more, about 400 million VND/sao (not including machinery). But in return, it can be harvested all year round, avoiding the impact of weather, especially during the rainy season, when the fruit quality is better than in the dry season.

Ms. Tram said that in order for passion fruit trees to grow and develop well and have high productivity, it takes 1.5 - 2 years to improve the soil.

Automatic watering system is installed in the passion fruit greenhouse.

Growing passion fruit in a greenhouse has many advantages over growing it outdoors. Growing in a greenhouse helps limit the invasion of pests, control and maintain stable humidity for plant growth. Along with that, it is easy to handle problems when passion fruit plants encounter.

In particular, compared to passion fruit trees grown outdoors, when grown in greenhouses, the exploitation time of passion fruit trees can be extended to 2 years before needing to be replaced.

Currently, the price of passion fruit produced by the cooperative is purchased by a business in Ho Chi Minh City at a price of 30,000 - 60,000 VND/kg. Thanks to its stable quality and export standards, greenhouse passion fruit always has a stable output, bringing a sustainable source of income to the cooperative.

With an output of 8 tons/sao, the cooperative's passion fruit is currently exported to Switzerland and the Netherlands, meeting standards for uniform fruit color, size of 9-12 fruits/kg and pesticide residue. In addition, the cooperative also provides high-quality passion fruit varieties to farmers in need.

Ms. Le Thi Bao Tram, Director of 360 High-Tech Agricultural Cooperative, said that the cooperative aims to expand the cultivation area to ensure enough output for direct export instead of having to sell through an intermediary. Therefore, the value of the product will certainly be much higher.