Teso orange farmers warned on quality

Teso fruit growers are at a loss with the bumper harvest of oranges after a specialist from Kawanda research station advised that orange varieties that the farmers have been planting are not right type for commercial juice extraction.

At least five million orange plants have so far been grown across Teso sub region in the past 10 years as farmers eagerly anticipated the construction of a fruit factory pledged by President Museveni in 2001.

Meet standards
“We are at a loss. Farmers have been seriously growing oranges knowing soon they would be reaping big from their labour,” Serere District chairperson, Joseph Opit said.

The agronomist, Richard Omollo said the specie of oranges that most farmers have been growing cannot meet the required standard of the fruit processing plant proposed for construction in Soroti.

He had been contracted by Uganda Development Cooperation (UDC) to conduct the feasibility study.

Various citrus diseases including the black spot have continued to attack oranges and yet their spread has not been curbed.

Ms Yudaya Kayodi, a senior economist at UDC, said the region has great potential for mass production of oranges and the farmers only need to be helped to use recommended practices of fruit farming.

Next year
“Teso has the potential but the oranges they have grown are not of good quality,” Ms Yudaya said adding that construction of the fruit processing plant will start next year.

Francis Ilakut one of the orange farmers in Kumi confessed he had not been following the right procedures yet he had been growing oranges since 2006.

But Sam Opus Okodel, leader of a farmer’s forum in Ongiino, blamed politicians for misleading farmers by discouraging them from committed cultivation of oranges.

The poor quality of oranges in Teso has also been blamed on use of pesticides that cannot treat black-spot which has attacked much of the orange in the sub region.

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