Taiwan, China passion fruit seedlings sell well across Asia, with an output value of 300 million, securing a firm foothold in the healthy seedling market
"Passion fruit is currently developing very rapidly in Asia. Exports of seedlings to Vietnam, Thailand and China alone amount to nearly 8 million plants, with an output value of nearly 300 million yuan, and the market is still growing. This year it is estimated to exceed 9 million plants." The current agricultural administration is vigorously promoting the New Southbound agricultural policy, and in the eyes of the Agriculture and Food Agency, "passion fruit seedlings" are precisely a project with promotion potential; the current Agricultural Research Institute is further promoting passion fruit virus immune serum and nucleic acid detection reagents, which can effectively detect six kinds of passion fruit virus diseases, hoping thereby to help the industry control passion fruit seedling quality from the source and improve export quality.
What is the current state of the passion fruit industry? Fang Yidan, head of the Crop Production Section of the Agriculture and Food Agency, said that in recent years the domestic passion fruit planting area has steadily fallen within the range of 680-700 hectares, with Dapingding in Puli as the main hub; although the current Kaohsiung Agricultural Improvement Station also intends to guide Kaohsiung farmers to cultivate passion fruit in winter, not only avoiding rain, typhoons and pests and diseases, but even bringing the production period one month earlier than Puli, Li Wenhao, assistant researcher at the Kaohsiung Agricultural Improvement Station, frankly admitted that passion fruit cultivation in the south still needs to be promoted.
At present, the fresh passion fruit produced domestically is all mainly used to meet the domestic market, "domestic prices are good, 60 to 70 yuan per kilogram, even breaking 100, so there are no exports." Instead, passion fruit seedlings have become the main export force; according to the Agriculture and Food Agency's information, there are currently six seedling companies in the country vigorously promoting the export of passion fruit seedlings, with great market potential.
