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APEDA to develop Hortinet software to ensure quality vegetable exports
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Monday, 27 February, 2012, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Archana Aroor, Mumbai
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With rising concerns for presence of pesticides in Indian vegetables exported to European and Middle-Eastern countries, the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) is working on a tool to monitor pesticide residues in vegetables.
In this regard, “Hortinet, a software is in the process of development, which is likely to bring a chain of growers, processors and exporters together in order to ensure good quality of vegetable export,” Sanjay Dave, director, APEDA, informed FnB News in a chat over telephone.
Dave explained that the initiative was taken after analysing the problem of pesticides in vegetables such as bhindi (lady’s finger), curry leaves, green chillies, bitter gourd, brinjal and drumsticks, which constitute about 80 per cent of the country's total exports - Rs 800-900 crore per year.
He added that based on the SWOT analysis done by the team, it was found that around six major vegetables - okhra, bitter gourd, curry leaves, drum sticks, green chillies and brinjal - were largely exported to European and Middle-Eastern countries, hence, it was decided to focus on them.
“All the vegetables were basically procured and exported from six different states like Gujarat, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, he said, adding that based on that around 22 clusters were formed while considering details such as type of pesticides used on the vegetables, how to control and packages of food practices were sent to state governments,” explained Dave.
In order to discuss the issue, APEDA held a meeting with the respective state governments to identify the place of procurement of such vegetables, whereby they were directed by APEDA to undertake registration of farmers and asked the state governments to procure vegetables only from these farmers.
The selected farmers will now be trained in growing export quality vegetables, segregation and proper packing with barcode for traceability so that they are equipped to produce such export quality vegetables adhering to quality standard norms of EU.
“Also our similar experience with grapes (Grapenet) had been an impetus to form Hortinet, whereby once the Hortinet is developed it would then be merged with Grapenet and accordingly the software would consider vegetables,” said Dave.
APEDA has almost completed the process and the software is likely to be developed in just few months.
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