Agriculture-friendly climatic conditions of Pakistan allow growing of 40 different kinds of vegetables and 21 types of fruits in four seasons. Official source in Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock (Minfal) on Saturday said.
At present area under fruits and vegetables was 0.995 million hectare of the total cultivated area with the total production of 10.992 million tonnes annually. He said major vegetables grown in Pakistan includes potato, onion, chilli, melons, cucurbits, tomato, turnip, and pea to meet domestic demand as well as to export abroad. "Whereas citrus, dates, mango, guava, apple, banana, apricot, grapes, almonds, peach, plum and pomegranate are the main fruit."
He said fruit and vegetable are exported to European and Middle-Eastern countries, which earn huge foreign reserves for the country. "Post-harvest loss in fruit and vegetables ranging from 25-40 percent was the main reason of rise in consumers' price and hidden quality loss.
He said the loss also brings low return to growers, processors and traders and country suffers in terms of foreign exchange earning. He said in order to preserve the product of quality different, post-harvest techniques are recommended for variety of products like hydro cooling, refrigeration and freezing, modified atmosphere (MA) packaging, storage, control atmosphere storage, skin coating, hypobaric and other modern techniques have been introduced.
He said in order to promote horticultural industry in Pakistan, standardisation of pre-harvest and post-harvest management technologies were necessary to be adopted to enhance foreign exchange earnings.