TESTIMONIALS

Mr Chiu is one of the durian farmers from Tangkak, Johor who faced serious durian fruit drops problems due to continuous heavy rainfalls lately. Anyhow, the fruit drop rate in his orchard is relatively low when compared to other farmers.

In fact, the orchard of Mr Chiu occupies approximately 56 acres area with eight planting plots, while the plot visited by reporter occupies around 3 acres land. His durian plantings are made up of 90% Musang King whereas the remaining varieties are XO, 101, Kampung etc. Since Kampung variety reaches market price of RM12 per kilogram, even though the price is still considerably lower than Musang King, Mr Chiu has decided not to eliminate it from the orchard. Meanwhile, he was surprised that other varieties are not likely to get knocked down as easily as Musang King during rainy season.

Based on his estimation, the fruit drop rate of his orchard is basically 50%. However, the surrounding farmers experienced even worse fruit drop rate. While everyone only managed to yield 20-50 durian fruits per durian tree, Mr Chiu harvested 100 fruits per durian tree though initially he expected each durian tree can bear up to 200 fruits.

Take care of trees before inducing flower

Mr Chiu highlighted that the farmers should focus on taking care of the health of trees before can proceed to inducing flower so as to maximize orchard’s outcome afterwards. Mr Chiu is especially into the fertilizer series from Agrobridge (M) Sdn Bhd, such as Complex Green Special (for use after harvesting to aid in recovery of fruit trees by improving health conditions), Innotec 12-12-17-2 (for use during flowering period to boost flowering rate), Complex Purple Special (for use during fruiting season to enhance fruit qualities) and Wuxal Ascofol (boost resistance towards dry weather).

Let’s take Mr Chiu’s tree age as an example, the dosage of first three fertilizers is 4-5 kilogram per tree for every 20 days, while dosage for the WUXAL foliar fertiliser is by diluting 30mL in 20L water. On top of that, Mr Chiu also applies compound fertilizers as suggested by Agrobridge (M) Sdn Bhd technician to promote green leaves growth, while the dosage is 2 kilogram per usage. Anyhow, fruit drops phenomenon brought by climate conditions might not always be a bad thing because over production could increase the Grade B fruit rate after all which does not give any economic benefits yet interrupt normal plant growth at the same time. Hence, he suggested farmers to restrict the production of Musang King trees of 10 years and above so that the yield is controlled at the range of 80-100 fruits only.