Guava tree is local fruit of South Americans and Caribbean countries and it was brought to Asian countries by Portuguese in the 17th century. Guava is the member of family Myrtaceae, this plant has higher adaptability as well as productivity.
This plant can produce high yield and good quality fruit with different weather seasons. Guava is purely edible fruit because it’s a thought it is poor’s man apple because of its low price. It is very nutritious and good in taste it has low price in the market it is available in the whole year because it bears two fruits in a single year and it has very low marketing cost.
It appears attractive due to its proper size, nice shape, good taste and sweet fragrance. Guava contains very high nutritive value, flavor and more interesting this plant has also medicinal properties and it has the potential in the processing industry for producing quality products. It has a very short life but in the recent years there has been increased interest in this fruit in the domestic as well as international markets. But due to short shelf period is the main factor for the development of the guava market.
Guava has attained as a fourth position in the fruit economy of the country and third major fruit in the province of Punjab. It is currently grown on large scale in many districts including Faisalabad, Jhang, Sargodha, Lahore and Sheikhupara, however it is also grown on a smaller scale on the plains of Punjab that’s why it is the leading in production. In Sindh a good quality guava is produced with a narrow shaped and with less seeds in the districts of Hyderabad, Dadu, Larkana and Shikarpur. In Khyber Pakthunkhwa (K.P.K.) it is produced in the districts of Maradn and Harza valley that produce the excellent quality of guava. So, this fruit is mostly grown all over the Pakistan. It is highly profitable fruit and it can be easily produced on wide range of temperature.
In Pakistan it is sown on about 61.6 thousands hectares of land with production of 508 thousand tons. But per hectares yield is very low with 8,246 kg. In Punjab province guava was grown on total area of 49 thousand hectares with the production of 454 thousand tons and the average per hectares yield was better than overall yield that was almost 9,098 kg (GOP, 2008). Punjab is only province that is contributing 80 percent of total production while rest of the 20 percent is contributed by the other three provinces. Punjab and Sindh both are producing best quality guava. In Sindh guava was the third largest fruit produced after the mango and banana with the production of 70000 ton annually. Pakistan also exports guava that earns high revenue for our country and the total exports for the guava was 24,520 million rupees (GOP, 2013).
Marketing of guava is an important process. The producer has to bear so many costs before selling his commodity to the other persons or players in the markets. During the stage of marketing the guava products could be faced with different problems and most of the problems are mostly bear by the producers which reduces his profit. The important problems include storage, market finance, and the price fluctuations.
There is an issue of low productivity of guava in our country because of mismanagement, fruit fly disease is common in both winter and summer as well as the post-harvest losses is common issues. Guava yield could be increased by two methods first by using the conventional breeding such as mutation, hybridization and selection or by using second method vitro hybridization, genetic transformation, double haploid production and embryo culture.
In order to fill the technological gap faced by the farmers and to increase the export of the guava. There is a need to increase storage facilities in the growing area of guava. There should be establishment of processing units in order to process guava and earn more revenue. High transportation charges and margins of the middleman should be reduced. There should be proper pricing mechanism in the markets.
Guava is the fourth largest fruit produced in the country. The main hurdles in the marketing of guava fruit was improper facilities of transportation, high charges of transportation and variation in prices faced by both guava growers as well as consumers. The government agencies should ensure that there should be proper pricing mechanism in the fruit market.
Authors are Student of MS (Agribusiness) at University of Agriculture Faisalabad.
Source: Frontier Post