South Africa's citrus industry hopes a new grape deal with China will bring better access protocol for its lemons.
Improved access arrangements for South African grapes in China have sparked hope among RSA citrus growers that the current challenging protocol for South African lemons will also be improved.
South African citrus industry spokesman Justin Chadwick confirmed that South Africa has launched an application with the Chinese authorities to improve the lemon protocol.
If successful, this will dramatically boost opportunities for South African growers to get a bigger slice of the very lucrative Chinese lemon market.
“One of the major focus points of the new Memorandum of Understand signed last week between Fruit South Africa (Fruit SA) and the Chinese Quarantine and Inspection Association (CIQA) is to get the technical teams of the two countries to work together much more closely. This will improve the process of providing the required technical information and guidance to speed-up the negotiations process for market access,” Chadwick told Fruitnet.
Chadwick saidthe present Chinese protocol is just too tough for South Africa’s lemons.
“Some of our lemons find their way into China, but we would like to improve the protocol for direct shipments,' he said. 'Lemon prices in China are extremely high, but this is due to an undersupplied market, and we need to improve the protocol so we can increase supplies.”
He said the South African application is based on the fact that lemons are a poor host for threats such as FCM (False Codling Moth) and fruitfly. “We need to create a better understanding of the technical information, and we hope that the MOU will help to facilitate this.”
Chadwick added that exports of other South African citrus categories to China have increased rapidly in recent years, and these programmes are running well.
“In the long term, we also want to approach the Chinese authorities on the protocols for easy peelers, which is in a similar position as lemons, with the fruit just not being able to stand up under the present protocols,” Chadwick said.
