Fresh on the heels of a deal allowing for the export of mangoes to mainland China, the Kingdom is eying the possibility of capitalising on that country’s insatiable appetite for dragon fruit.

After a dip in 2020, fresh dragon fruit exports to China grew by 77 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2021. It was the sixth most popular fruit import  last quarter, with a value of $165 million, according to official Chinese figures.

Yaing Siang Koma, founder of the Cambodian Center for Study and Development in Agriculture, has already committed to helping grow 1 million dragon fruit trees on 1,000 hectares of land in Sambor Neak, Preah Vihear province, to supply the international market. Koma believes that the project will eventually create 3,000 to 10,000 jobs locally.

“We will enable Cambodia to better manage its agricultural market without relying on what we can import,” he said.

Koma believes that Cambodia could profit significantly from the increased demand in China. Last year, neighbouring Vietnam exported more than $1 billion of dragon fruit to the Chinese market despite a drop in demand in China. Demand is expected to rise post-COVID. According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade of Vietnam, 80 percent of dragon fruit from the country is sent to China and 99 percent of all dragon fruit sold in China is from Vietnam, where it is not popular.

Dragon fruit is thought to bring fortune among the Chinese diaspora because of its name, shape and vivid colours. According to Chinese folklore, the fruit was ejected after the final breath of a fire-spewing dragon and traditionally would be presented to the emperor.

If a deal is struck, the agreement could mark the third fresh fruit export deal between Cambodia and China in as many years. The two countries reached an agreement for the export of bananas in 2018 and followed that with a deal for the export of mangoes in 2020.

The first batch of mangoes was shipped from Cambodia earlier this month.

A market shortage coupled with low crop prices has hounded Cambodian market producers this year. In February, the Ministry of Forestry, Fisheries and Agriculture said prices of the fruit had dropped substantially since the beginning of the harvest season.

Prices for the fruit are said to have dropped by $0.10 to $2.10 per kilogramme in China, while wholesale prices in Cambodia have plunged by 60 percent during the pandemic, falling from a peak price in 2019 of $0.20 to about $0.08.

The Kingdom boasts more than 124,000 hectares of mango plantations, with Thailand being the chief export market because of the appetite for highly desirable Cambodian green mangoes.

• Tags: China, dragon fruit, mango export