HO CHI MINH CITY: The 16th Vietnamese Southern Fruit Festival was held at the Suoi Tien Theme Park in District 9, Ho Chi Minh City from 1 – 23 June 2012. The festival was a joint collaboration between the Municipal Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development. It is an annual affair, organized to celebrate the harvest season of fruits such as mangoes, rambutans, and durians.
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The main objectives of this festival were to promote and increase consumption of local tropical fruits among tourists and locals, to provide income for smallholders to traders, to boost the tourism industry, and to provide fruit smallholders and growers an avenue to promote their developed varieties through the fruit competition.
The programme for the festival included a fruit parade during the opening ceremony, sale of the different local fruit varieties in boat shaped stalls, exhibition many rare and underutilized local fruit species, booths with fruit based processed products and a fruit competition with participants comprising mainly of smallholders.
The festival began with an opening ceremony on June 1 that included cultural performances and parades by Laos, Malaysian, Thailand and Indonesian cultural troupes, in the presence of more than 20 foreign diplomats based in Ho Chi Minh City
The highlight of the festival was a fruit competition that garnered 600 smallholders from 21 provinces, each vying for prizes for the best of 11 fruit types including durian, rambutan, mangosteens, mangoes, pitaya, pomelo and mandarins. The criteria for judging included external appearance, fruit size, shape, percentage of pulp/flesh to skin, ease of opening, sweetness, general taste and minimum residual levels.
Fruits prices were listed and sold lower than market prices, which were between VND 3000 – VND 18000, depending on fruit type and variety.