Expensive Vietnamese purple longan sought after by Thai people
Because of its beautiful and unique color, purple longan in the West is being sought after by Thailand for both fruit and seedlings.
Mr. Tran Van Huy in Soc Trang - the first person to discover the purple longan and then grafted branches to supply to the market said that although he had grafted several thousand branches, the supply was not enough.
Currently, in his garden, there are more than 40 trees bearing fruit. Because he is focusing on grafting, the amount of fruit is not much, only about 200 - 300 kg per crop, selling for 100,000 VND per kg. As for grafted trees, about 40 - 60 cm high, he sells them for one million VND per tree.
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| Purple longan grown in gardens in the West. |
Mr. Huy also said that recently a group of tourists from Thailand came to him and expressed their desire to buy his plants and products for propagation, but he did not sell them. “I grow them to serve the people in the country, not to sell them to foreigners,” Mr. Huy said.
The owner of a longan garden in Can Tho also said that many Thai people come here to buy purple longan fruit and seedlings to plant, but he has no products to supply because the products and seedlings have been ordered by customers in Hanoi and Saigon in advance.
“Because my garden is not large, I only get a little over a hundred kilos each crop. When the longan season comes, all the customers order. Even though the price is up to 200,000 VND per kilo, regular customers have signed up to buy everything so there is no need to worry about the output,” said the garden owner.
On websites selling plant varieties, purple longan trees are also advertised for sale, each tree costs only about 100,000 - 500,000 VND. Many farm owners said that this is a grafted tree, it will bear fruit after 2 years. However, according to Mr. Huy, this longan is very difficult to grow, most farms take the root of another tree and graft purple longan shoots on, so the quality of the fruit will not be as good as the grafted tree. On the other hand, many places sell other longan varieties but label them as purple longan, so buyers need to be careful to avoid losing money.
Purple longan is a "strange" fruit discovered in Soc Trang nearly 10 years ago, but has not yet been popularized in the market. For the tree to bear fruit, growers need to take care of it for at least 3 years. Therefore, local authorities recommend that people should not plant purple longan in large quantities. When supply exceeds demand, their value will decrease, while the investment capital is high./.
