The Mekong Delta accounts for about 80% of the country’s coconut area. The main coconut growing areas are: Ben Tre, Tra Vinh, Tien Giang and Vinh Long.
The Department of Plant Protection has just received the draft pest risk analysis results for Vietnam’s fresh coconuts exported to the United States from the Plant and Animal Quarantine Division of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).
Currently, Vietnam’s fresh coconut products are not approved for import into the United States. To be approved, fresh coconuts must undergo a pest risk assessment.
Specifically, the export item must be fresh young coconuts that have been cleaned of rotten and fallen fruit. green peel; When ripe, the bark turns brown. During post-harvest handling, fresh young coconuts must be stripped of all green skin and at least 75% of the coco coir.
The US side also identified 43 species of coconut palm pests, including: 1 species of spider, 39 species of insect, 1 species of snail, 1 species of bacteria and 1 species of nematode. However, according to the results of the pest risk analysis, no species is likely to follow fresh young coconuts exported from Vietnam to the United States.
The Department of Plant Protection and the US Department of Animal and Plant Quarantine will continue to exchange and negotiate to select appropriate crop protection measures to minimize the risk of pests.
In parallel, on February 8, the Department of Plant Protection sent an official cable to the provincial and municipal ministries of agriculture and rural development that grow coconut, coconut producing, processing and exporting enterprises and related entities to contribute to the US draft.
“In order to export Vietnam’s husk coconut to the US market soon and ensure favorable and easy-to-implement coconut export conditions, the Plant Protection Ministry suggests organizations and individuals to comment and send the ministry before February 20,” the official said Communication.
In early 2022, many exporters complained that it was difficult to export fresh coconuts to the United States. The country used to agree to just peel off the green skin and leave the white skin, but now the US has changed the rules. Fresh coconut must be shelled to the coconut skull.
To solve the problem, the Department of Plant Protection hastily completed and submitted a technical dossier asking the United States to license the export of freshly shelled coconuts from Vietnam.
Based on the Department’s Market Opening Document, along with scientific documents and the Border Crop Protection Database, the USDA released the Draft Pest Risk Analysis Results for Fresh Coconut on May 1, 2020. 1/2/2023. This is an important step for Vietnamese fresh coconuts to return to this potential market.