6 Reasons Why You Should Plant Pummelo

6 Reasons Why You Should Plant Pummelo – Are you trying to look for a fruit crop that you would like to produce in your farm? Take a good second look at pummelo. There are a number of good reasons why you should try growing some for your own consumption as well as for commercial purposes.

Here are the six good reasons why planting pummelo is beneficial:

Higher Price
Compared to other fruit trees, say mango, pummelo offers a number of advantages. First, if your variety is of the good kind, it fetches a much better price than mango. In Metro Manila, the superior ones such as Magallanes (often referred to as Davao pummelo) and similar varieties, retail at P120 to P140 a kilo. In the case of mango, the usual retail price of the good kind is P80 per kilo. It could be much lower during the peak mango season.

Longer Shelf Life
Compared to mango, pummelo fruits have a much longer shelf life. Once ripe, the mango fruit will spoil in just a few days, especially when it is not placed in cold storage. Pummelo fruits, on the other hand, will keep for as long as a month under ordinary room temperature conditions. Under cold storage, it will not spoil for as long as six months. This is important, especially in marketing. You don’t have to ship by plane to distant markets, which is very expensive. The fruits could be shipped by boat. In the marketplace, you are not pressured to dispose of your merchandise because you can keep your pummelos for a long time. In the case of other fruits which have short shelf life like lanzones, rambutan and mango, one is often pressured to sell them at a bargain once they are ripe.

More Trees Per Hectare
You can plant more pummelo tree than mango per hectare. For instance, the latest recommendation for carabao mango is a distancing of 12 to 14 meters apart. There are those who would even opt for a distancing of 20 meters apart. In the case of pummelo, the distancing could be eight meters apart. In a hobby farm where space is limited, the trees could be distance closer.

Short Gestation Period
Pummelo has a shorter gestation period. Grafted trees will produce a commercial crop as early as four years from planting. The trees will even bear fruit earlier than four years but commercial growers say that the fruits are not as sweet as those produced by at least four-year-old trees. In the case of mango, commercial production starts at seven to eight years from planting, although grafted trees will bear few fruits earlier.

No Chemical Flower Inducer Needed
Unlike mango, pummelo does not require chemical sprays to induce flowering. Mango flower inducers cost money, hence a disadvantage when compared with pummelo. Rain or shower does not adversely affect the emerging flowers of pummelo. In the case of mango, when rain overtakes the flowers, they are damaged by fungi resulting in crop failure if not remedied by timely spraying with fungicide.

Wide Adaptation
Pummelo can be grown in many parts of the country. Many people believe that the best place to grow pummelo is Mindanao. The truth is that pummelo will also grow well in Luzon and the Visayas.

Source: Zac B. Sarian, Agriculture magazine