On June 3, the Dak Lak Provincial Durian Association said that the whole province currently has more than 45,000 hectares of durian, and the output of this year's crop is expected to reach about 500,000 tons, a slight increase compared to last year.
Currently, Dak Lak has 2 investment units and is capable of testing gold O, Cadmium and many other indicators to serve agricultural exports.
According to Mr. Le Anh Trung, Chairman of the Durian Association of Dak Lak province, testing laboratories in the province and surrounding areas are fully capable of meeting the needs of testing for yellow O in agricultural products.
Mr. Trung said that the current problem is not in the lack of testing laboratories but in building and operating a strict and synchronous quality control process to meet the increasingly strict requirements of import markets.
The current testing capacity basically meets the needs. The important thing is to establish a methodical process for controlling agricultural products from production, harvesting, preliminary processing to export to ensure the standards of the importing country," Mr. Trung said.
According to the Dak Lak Provincial Durian Association, a modern testing laboratory needs an investment capital of 50 - 100 billion VND. For smaller scale facilities, the investment level is less than 50 billion VND but still can test about 2 containers of agricultural products per day.
Mr. Trung said that for agricultural exports in general and durian in particular to develop sustainably, it is necessary to build a closed-loop management system between export enterprises, packaging facilities, raw material areas and farmers.
The bottleneck of export activities for many years lies in the organizational process, supervision and quality control, not in the lack of testing laboratories," Mr. Trung emphasized.
Industry experts also believe that the increasingly tight requirements of import markets on chemical residues, traceability and testing of banned substances are creating great pressure on the durian industry.
Therefore, besides investing in facilities, standardizing production processes and quality management according to the chain is a key factor to improve competitiveness and maintain stable export activities.
