Growing mango varieties as big as water bottles to sell to the US and China, a cooperative in Son La earns billions of dong each year.

The cooperative's VietGAP mango orchard is covered to prevent pests and diseases even when the fruit is the size of a chick's egg. Photo: Hai Tien.

Visiting Co Kieng village, Huoi Mot commune, Song Ma district (Son La), we learned that Song Ma Mango Agricultural Service Cooperative has just exported 3 containers (90 tons) of VietGAP mangoes to China at a selling price of 8,000 VND/kg at the garden, nearly 15% higher than the same type of non-VietGAP mangoes.

As a result of this season's production, the Cooperative has 13 hectares of mangoes and harvested over 190 tons of fruit. In addition to exporting the above output, the Cooperative also sold all remaining mangoes to domestic traders and Doveco Food Processing Export Company (Ninh Binh) at an average price of 6,000 VND/kg.

GL4 mango on sloping land

Mr. Nguyen Van Vuong - Director of Song Ma Mango Cooperative said that out of the 13ha of mangoes mentioned above, only 10ha are yielding fruit, the remaining area has just been grafted and improved to GL4 variety so it has not been harvested yet. The reason the Cooperative switched to intensive cultivation of GL4 mango variety is because these mango trees have high yield, high quality, large fruit with an average weight of 0.5kg/fruit, very suitable for export. On the other hand, switching to growing the same mango variety is also easier to intensively cultivate.

Packaging specifications for each exported mango. Photo: Hai Tien.

Mr. Vuong also added that the domestic market usually only sells mangoes weighing less than 0.5kg/fruit, for export, the bigger the fruit the better, like China, in addition to ensuring food hygiene and safety, also requires a minimum weight of 0.6kg/fruit or more. The US and European countries are the same, in addition to meeting the clean mango standards according to regulations, also require each fruit to weigh 0.7kg or more.

Mr. Bui Quoc Trung (member of the cooperative) revealed that the above impressive achievements were due to the cooperative participating in the Project: "Building a fruit tree production model according to VietGAP to serve the development of raw material areas, linked with consumption linkage in some Northwestern provinces" of the National Agricultural Extension Center. In which, Mr. Trung planted 4 hectares of GL4 mango and harvested nearly 80 tons of fruit, the output value reached 560 million VND, minus all production material costs, the profit was about 340 million VND.

"The outstanding advantage of the GL4 mango variety compared to other mango varieties is that the fruit flesh (edible part) reaches more than 80%, and also allows harvesting the fruit when it is green (75-80 days after flowering) or ripe (100 days after flowering), the quality is delicious, sweet or crunchy to suit consumer tastes.

Thereby, helping to spread out the harvest, reduce pressure on consumption output, increase the value of mangoes, and increase production efficiency. This is one of the reasons why the cooperative has included a structure of planting 100% of the area of ​​GL4 mango variety," Mr. Trung added.

Thanks to proper care following VietGAP procedures, the mango tree produces many fruits as big as water bottles. Photo: Hai Tien.

Secrets of intensive mango cultivation for export

To intensively cultivate mangoes for export, Mr. Trung and the members of the cooperative all chose to grow GL4 varieties, balanced nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium fertilization, combined with organic microbial fertilizers or composted manure with Trichoderma. Pest control according to IPM includes taking care of the trees to keep them healthy and balanced; promptly cutting off small branches, diseased branches, hidden branches, and ineffective branches to create ventilation in the garden, helping to increase resistance, especially resistance to all kinds of pests and diseases.

In addition, it is necessary to cut off flower clusters that do not bear fruit, branches and leaves that cover the fruit, and prune diseased, stunted, deformed fruits and fruits at the top of branches. Pruning should be done after the tree stops physiologically shedding fruit.

In practice, we found that the cooperative's mango gardens are all planted along the foothills of loose, fertile soil, regularly nourished by organic humus and mineral nutrients washed down from the mountains.

Along with that, the cooperative also applies many technical advances in intensive mango cultivation such as, treating trees to flower and bear fruit 30 days later than the main crop; fertilizing through leaves at the right time; preventing pests and diseases that damage mangoes by using fruit bags; installing automatic irrigation pipes for the garden from water sources in the mountain ravines,...

Thanks to that, the use of pesticides on crops is significantly reduced, mango productivity and quality are increased, the rate of fruit meeting export standards is increased, production efficiency is increased, contributing to protecting public health and the ecological environment, especially for direct workers.

Loading mangoes onto containers for export. Photo: Hai Tien.

With the above methods, in the recent mango crop, the cooperative exported nearly 50% of the fruit produced, including many fruits weighing up to 2.6 kg, far exceeding the inherent characteristics of the variety (weight 1.2 kg/fruit), the harvest value reached 1.33 billion VND/ha of cultivation, the profit reached more than 800 million VND/ha.

It is known that, besides the mango growing model of Song Ma Cooperative, Son La Agricultural Extension also successfully produced VietGAP mango in Muong La and Yen Chau districts, each model scaled 10 hectares.

Source: https://danviet.vn/trong-giong-xoai-to-nhu-binh-nuoc-ban-sang-my-trung-quoc-mot-hop-tac-xa-o-son-la-thu-tien-ty-moi-nam-20240824092058043.htm