Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (Parc) is holding a five-day international workshop on food safety standards for export of fruit and vegetable products here from Sunday.
Sources told Business Recorder here on Saturday that Parc has arranged a series of international seminars under its agricultural linkage programme on human resource development in the changing globalisation in collaboration with Asian Productivity Organisation (APO).
Delegates of APO member countries Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Vietnam will participate in these workshops.
Sources said that the basic objective of the project is to provide an opportunity to the participants/experts of the member countries to share their views and experiences on the issues confronting the agriculture sector in the region and come up with their pragmatic solutions.
They pointed out that in recent decades, international trade in high-value food products such as fruit and vegetables has expanded quickly, fuelled by growing consumer demand and technological development in marketing and processing.
They said that rapid technological advances in processing, packaging, storage and transportation have enabled an enormous number of food product, fresh and processed alike, to be traded in the international markets. "This trend is posing major challenges as well as opportunities for developing countries in the trade in high value food products", they added.