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Eleven shipments of dragon fruit flown to the U.S.
About 10 tons of dragon fruit have been flown to America since Vietnam’s only U.S.-licensed fruit irradiation plant resumed operations in April, according to Nguyen Huu Dat, director of the Post Entry Plant Quarantine Center No. 2.
Dragon fruit exports to the U.S. ground to a halt in December last year when the Son Son Joint-Stock Company suspended its dragon fruit irradiation service to carry out maintenance work on its equipment.
Son Son is the only company in Vietnam licensed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to irradiate fruit for the U.S. market.
Since April, 11 shipments of dragon fruit has been flown to the U.S.
“Dragon fruit shipped to the U.S. by air has been arriving in good condition,” Dat told Tuoi Tre after returning from a visit to the U.S.
Dragon fruit imported from Vietnam is mostly bought by Americans of Vietnamese and Chinese origin for about US$11 per kilogram, he said. In Vietnam, dragon fruit sells in local markets for about VND12,000 (66 cents) a kilogram.
“We have tried preserving the irradiated dragon fruit at 5 degrees Celsius and the fruit remains fresh for up to 30 days,” he said. “We are currently experimenting with methods to preserve the fruit for 60 days.”
If the experiment succeeds, dragon fruit could be exported by sea to help save transport costs, he said. A sea journey from Vietnam to the U.S. takes about 21 days.
But dragon fruit are not yet being sold in U.S. supermarkets, where the fruits could be sold for even higher prices, Dat said.
He said Dr. Thomas Sutton from the U.S. Department of Agriculture suggested Vietnamese fruit exporters start promoting their exotic fruit to U.S. consumers.
The promotion could involve distributing posters and recipes in U.S. supermarkets to promote Vietnamese dragon fruit, he said.
Vietnamese fruit exporters could soon step up exports to the U.S. when the country’s second U.S.-licensed irradiation plant begins operations within the next two months, Dat said.
Imported fruits from tropical countries fetch high prices in the U.S., Dat said, with longans from Hawaii selling for $7 to $10 per kilogram and mangos for $9 per kilogram.
“These are the fruit that Vietnam is capable of exporting to the U.S.,” he said. “The imported fruit currently on sale in the U.S. are of the same quality as Vietnamese fruit.”
Vietnam’s Department of Plant Protection was working on legal procedures to export fruit such as longan, lychee, rambutan, mango, guava, jack-fruit, star apple and mangosteen to the U.S.
Dat said he hoped the U.S. market would open to Vietnamese longans, lychees and rambutans by the end of this year.
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