Agriculture Business Week

With good early bookings, all the signs are that there will be another well attended Pig, Poultry & Dairy Focus Asia 2010. This event is now perceived as Asia ’s leading independent technical conference for anyone involved in modern pig, poultry and dairy production and attracts production managers, QA managers, nutritionists and veterinarians. The event will be held on 1 – 3rd March 2010 at the prestigious Imperial Queen’s Park Hotel in Bangkok, Thailand.

The event has 90 international experts as its speakers and topical issues such as the use of enzymes and probiotics to improve feed utilisation and animal performance, the effect of health on meat or milk quality, controlling the impact of mycotoxins, optimising reproductive performance and the value of organic minerals are among the topics on the programme.

In addition, the pig programme will consider topics such as intestinal integrity, semen analysis, weaning capacity and boar taint control and the poultry programme will also consider in ovo vaccination, evaluation of feed trials, single stage incubation and salmonella control. The Dairy programme will also focus on calf pneumonia, heat stress, reproductive health management and coccidiosis.

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Posted on February 5th, 2010 under Events, Livestock, Poultry. Tags: Asia, Bangkok, Conference, Dairy, Events, Pig, Poultry, Thailand. Comments: None

An industrious Thai family relied on science and sound management to transform a small rice mill into one of Southeast Asia’s most high tech piggery farms.

Ratchaburi, Thailand — At first glance, the whole land area looks like a series of uniform concrete houses much like what one sees in middle class Philippine subdivisions. But it doesn’t take much time to figure out what’s inside those houses for the overpowering stench of pig manure is the ultimate giveaway. We were told that there are more than 6o houses, each one of those can accommodate 1,200 pigs. By the time they reach the marketable size of 120 kgs, the pigs are sold to local Thai supermarkets.

That is of course a very simplistic way of getting ahead of the whole story. Truth to tell, Udomdach farm, one of the many farms we visited in the recently concluded VIV Asia Agri Journalist Program, is an interesting tale of how a Thai family relied on science, government support and sound management to transform a once small rice mill into one of Southeast Asia’s most high tech piggery farms.

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Posted on March 14th, 2009 under Farming, Livestock, Rice. Tags: Farm, Pigs/Hogs, Rice, Thai, Thailand, Udomdach. Comments: 2

PUMMELO PRODUCTION
Pummelo (Citrus maxima Burm. Merr.) which originated in Malaysia is now grown in many Asian countries. It is commercially grown in many parts of Malaysia although the best fruits come from the Ipoh district near Kuala Lumpur. In this district, several cultivars are being grown. The latest cultivar that the Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (MARDI) has released is melo mas, probably the best cultivar in Malaysia. It has sweet, juicy and very refreshing flesh which is well-accepted by consumers in Malaysia and in Mindanao. It is far superior compared with other cultivars like sunwillak, pampelina and chandler in terms of prolificacy and taste. Malaysia exports pummelo to Singapore and in the Middle East.

Thailand, on one hand, is the world’s largest producer and exporter of pummelo. Pummelo ranks among the first five export fruits of Thailand. This country claims that it produces the best pummelo in the world and that’s probably true. The quality of pummelo in Thailand is acceptable in the world market. It is said that the best match of cultivars, environment niches, and cultural skills of pummelo farmers is in Thailand. Most of the pummelo orchards in Thailand, with less than a hectare to 3 ha are owned by smallholders.

It is impressive how enterprising farmers in Thailand converted the swampy areas in Nakhon Pathom near Bangkok into highly productive pummelo orchards. They used a backhoe fitted with wide steel tracts to construct series of dikes and canals. The distance between dikes is 7 m, and each canal between dikes has a depth of 1.5 m, bottom width of 0.70 m and top width of 1.5 m.

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Posted on January 18th, 2009 under Fruits. Tags: Malaysia, Palm oil, Pummelo, Rubber, Thailand. Comments: 1

In the late 90′s we conducted a technology search in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. We visited research and extension centers, and documented technologies generated by research institutions. We also conducted on-farm observations of innovative practices that farmers and traders apply in the production and postharvest handling of durian(Durio zibethinus Mur.) and mangosteen(Garcinia mongostana Linn.).

The technology search was useful in fastracking the generation of technologies which we made available to local farmers through the Handbook on Durian Production in the ASEAN and Handbook on Mangosteen Production in the ASEAN. These publications have helped in the expansion of both crops in the country. Durian is now one of the country’s major crops. It has been grown in over 20,000 hectares (ha) and provided high income to many fruit growers, especially the smallholders. It also provided employment to thousands of farm laborers, traders, processors, and businessmen. Similarly, mangosteen is emerging as one of the country’s major fruit crops and medicinal crops, which is being grown in over 5,000 ha.

When the Department of Agriculture awarded the senior writer as Outstanding National Agricultural Scientist in 1996, he used his cash prize to conduct technology search and extensive documentation of the technological practices in the production and postharvest handling of longkong and duku in southern Thailand and northern Malaysia.

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Posted on January 4th, 2009 under Fruits. Tags: Durian, Longan, Malaysia, Mandarin, Mangosteen, Tangerine, Technology, Thailand. Comments: 3