The bottomline of brandname or market demands

Chicken mangosteen salad has now gone viral on social media as well as restaurants and food stores. People in every corner of the country are buying green mangosteen at relatively high cost to make the notable salad. Catching up such market demands, various mangosteen orchard owners have make the harvests of the green fruit while many others have stood firm to preserve the brandnames of ripe mangosteen, justifying that the green fruit harvest would definitely affect the growth and development of mangosteen in later on crop yields.

Many orchard owners only harvest ripe mangosteen to keep the orchard and Binh Duong mangosteen brands. In the photo: The 70-year-old magosteen orchard of Lam's family

Green or ripe?

Catching up the trend of chicken mangosteen salad being crazed by people everywhere, some orchard owners in Binh Duong have recently harvested green mangosteen to sell at high prices. According to them, harvesting green mangosteen has higher economic yield than ripe. However, many are left wondering of the effects on mangosteen trees which may age hundreds of years and hard to grow. Whether harvesting green mangosteen affects the yield and development of the trees or not?

Farmers in Thanh Tuyen commune of Thanh An district in Dau Tieng district were excited about N.T.T's mangosteen orchard, which won greatly for selling green mangosteen at high prices to traders at the beginning of the harvest. The price of green mangosteen at the beginning of the harvest was VND 150,000 a kg of whole fruit (gasket and flesh). According to those sellers, selling green mangosteen was not losing as 10 fruits are all 10 with little effort and time to care as from flowering to harvesting green fruit only takes 2 to 2 ,5 months while waiting for ripe takes up to 3 to 3.5 months, not to mention the loss of rotten fruit.

Lieu Van Tai Phu in Bung hamlet of Thanh Tuyen commune in Dau Tieng district with 1.4 hectares of mangosteen trees planted since 1985, said: “If there is a good market, farmers will aim for it, but harvesting green mangosteen is like the story of snatching. I have experimented with picking green to sell at high prices for high economic efficiency, but it greatly affected the orchard. Green mangosteen are very mature, so it is very difficult to break from the branches, forcing to exert a very strong force to pull the fruit down, which will cause leaves to fall, branches to break, and trees to bleed, affecting the photosynthesis process as well as health and yield of the season there after."

Meanwhile, Pham Hanh Nhan of Hamlet 1 in An Tay commune of Ben Cat town said that harvesting green mangosteen does not affect the growth and development of the plant much.

“I have 20 mangosteen trees of over 30 years old. At the beginning of the harvest, I often pick green fruit to make salad for parties as well as sell to orders. Picking green would not work in the technique of breaking the fruit combined with manure, ashes; and this year's rain is late, so my orchard has a good harvest and a big hit."

According to Nhan, the technique of picking green is very important as it is necessary to choose old fruits while many other branches are pruned to nourish ripe fruits. When picking, you must use your hands to close the stalk, absolutely do not break the branches, break it slowly without pulling the fruits so as not to affect the leaves and branches.

Watching farmers in An Tay commune of Ben Cat town in some households pick green mangosteen to sell to other farmers and traders in Thuan An city, Ho Chi Minh city, Phu Giao, and Dau Tieng, it was found that households selling green bamboo shoots were in orchards poorly cared for or changed owners or the picking some plants for testing.

Harvest needs to ensure technical factors

In Thuan An city, people rarely harvest green but determine to keep the brand name of 100-year-old mangosteen. The mangosteen is more than half an acre with about 75 roots of Vuong Hoang Lam in An Thanh ward is 70 years old but still healthy and full of life.

Lam confided: “In order to keep the family's traditional orchard, I absolutely do not pick and sell green mangosteen. Only households who rent the orchards for economic yields will sell green fruits.”

Lam said that harvesting green bamboo shoots is like killing the chickens for eggs. If you run after market demands, the tree will be exhausted very quickly because when picked, the top of the mangosteen will not come out anymore. Controversally, picking ripe fruits would result in 2 or 3 more tops to shoot for the next crop.

This year mangosteen is in season, some farmers combine harvesting green to prepare special dishes. In the photo: Freshly picked mangosteen for sale by Doi's family

Nguyen Van Doi's family in Hung Tho neighborhood of Hung Dinh ward dedicates a half-acre orchard with about 10 huts to serve visitors coming to eat, relax and experience picking mangosteen fruits. In addition, his family still keeps two separate orchard of more than 1 hectare with more than 300 mangosteen trees specializing in picking ripe to keep the famous Lai Thieu mangosteen brand for a long time. Doi said: "Every day, the family picks about 5-10 kg of green mangosteen to process and serve visitors, but when picking green, you have to be very careful and mind the technical matters."

According to many people, if ripe mangosteen is known as the queen of fruits with a sweet and sour taste, green mangosteen for the chicken salad is called the king of salads. When mangosteen is ripe, one part is 10 times better than green one mixed with chicken salad. The intestines of bamboo shoots are both crispy and sweet combined with the tough and chewy chicken; and the strong spices make the salad more Southern.

Currently, type 1 green mangosteen with shell at the orchard has a price ranging from VND 40,000 to 60,000 a kg. Some planters make finished products and sell green mangosteen flesh for VND 400,000 to 550,000 a kg depending on the type. To have 1 kg of finished green mangosteen, farmers must collect from 5 to 5.5 kg of peeled green mangosteen. Making green mangosteen is very laborious as the farmers have to peel under the tap and prepare a mixture of salt, lemon, and ice to make the green mangosteen flesh white and crispy. Green mangosteen is sold by order not for mass sale.

Talking to us, Pham Do Bich Quyen - Deputy Head of Binh Duong provincial Plant Protection and Cultivation Sub-Department, said: “Harvesting green mangosteen does not affect the growth and development of the plant much because when the fruit leaves, harvest is also old enough. When ripe, mangosteen fruit will have a separate layer between the left stalk and the branch. When picking the separate layer, it will separate itself without affecting the remaining branches, and when harvesting the mangosteen fruit is still green if the branch or fruit stalk is not cleverly broken. The method will damage the shoots, thereby affecting the process of producing new fruit for the next crop. In addition, the harvesting of green, unripe ones can skew the harvest time of the following crop. As for whether the assessment affects the quality of the next crop or not, it has not been determined, it needs more time to study and evaluate. Currently, most mangosteen orchard owners in Binh Duong harvest ripe fruits mainly to keep the brandnames.

Reported by Kim Ha – Tien Hanh – Translated by Vi Bao