www.chitraltimes.com

Need stressed on the preservation of fruits in Chitral

By Zahiruddin

CHITRAL: The fruits of apple and apricot go waste in large quantity in Chitral in the absence of any scientific method of preservation and marketing, the farmers said here on Sunday. They said that apricot and apple are produced in large quantity in Chitral which included superb species but the farmers derive no benefits out of it to improve their economic conditions. “We feed the animals a good quantity of the fruits in the peak season days when there is a galore of the fruits and we find no way of their proper utilization”, a farmer Khosh Khan from upper Chitral said. The farmers said that the marketing of fresh fruits is not possible due to the transportation problems which is too costly. They said that the fruits of local species of apricot and apple start decaying very shortly after they ripe as these are very juicy. No effort has been made to introduce any procedure and mechanism of preserving the fresh fruits or dry them up retaining their colour and tang, they said. The farmers were of the view that the local species of apricot are far more superior to that of the other areas which are available in Chitral market. They said that despite the fact that there is abundance of the fruits, in the local market, the dried fruits of other areas are sold. The very destiny of the farmers can change for better if the fruits are saved from waste, they said. They said that training should be imparted to the farmers specially the women folk on how to prepare jam of apple and apricot. They said that although a project named Fruits and Vegetables Development Board was launched some years ago but it faced closure without achieving any of its targets.