Piura, Peru August 4 and 5, 2009

Tue, Aug 04, 2009 at 11:27:59 AM

Over the next 2 days, we had the Mango Conference organized by PROMANGO. More than 350 participants attended including growers, members of the Administrative Committee, private businessmen, packers, exporters and the rest of the mango industry. I presented a talk on mango cultivars of the future the first day. The next day my talk was about mango consumers in the United States. The sections of talks were diverse, covering different topics of interest for the Peruvian mango industry, weather changes, the Nino phenomenon, anthracnose, diseases in mango, regulations, industry perspectives and alternatives. We had an intense amount of talks both days.

During the breaks we exchanged opinions, discussed different topics, made new friends and I got a new invitation. Before my return I spent my last day in the field. We visited the San Lorenzo area with 15,000 ha cultivated with mango. This shows the high importance of mango export production in the region. This region gets less than a half inch of rain each year, has salinity problems and it is hot during the day and cold during the night. The sector has a highly diverse structure in terms of farm size, farm type and socioeconomic characteristics. The area was dominated by mangos, grapes, and bananas and is set amongst a landscape of ancient history, tradition and modern realities.

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