Taiwan and Australia are partnering to grow high-quality lychees year-round, a Taiwan Agricultural Research Institute (TARI) official said on Friday.
The idea is to take advantage of the climates in the two countries to extend the lychees’ short growing season, which has led to an imbalance between supply and demand, said Chang Jer-way (張哲瑋), a senior horticulturist at the Chiayi Agricultural Experiment Branch.
Under a memorandum of understanding signed last year with the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, the institute sent four varieties of baby lychee plants to Australia in September, which were placed in a year-long quarantine at a facility in Canberra.
Once they pass the quarantine period, the lychees will be planted in Queensland, Chang said.
“We hope to create a year-round supply of Taiwanese lychees through cooperation with a country in the southern hemisphere, and perhaps apply that model to other fruits,” Chang said.
This is the first time that Taiwan has tested this business model, and if the partnership works out, Taiwan could profit through royalties and elevate its global profile as a high-quality lychee exporter, said Chang.
The four varieties being tested in Australia are strains of Tainung Nos. 3, 4, 5 and 7, known as “Rose Red,” “Lucky,” “Ruby” and “Early Big” respectively.
Australian Office in Taipei Representative Catherine Raper said that the project was anticipated by her nation, noting that it won TARI an award from Queensland at the Australia-Taiwan Business Awards this month, she said.
The partnership with Taiwan complements Australia’s own national interests, Raper said, noting that it is also the first time Australia has launched this type of agricultural partnership with another country.
“There will be Taiwanese varieties grown in Queensland, Australia, and then exported to Southeast Asia. So this grows Taiwan’s export capacity and ensures that there is year-round supply to the market,” Raper said.
According to TARI, Taiwan grows about 90,000 tonnes of lychees a year, mostly from May to July. While they cost around NT$40 (US$1.33) per kilogram in Taiwan, they can cost around NT$100 per kilogram in other nations.
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
THE TOUR: Pope Francis has gone on a 12-day visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. He was also invited to Taiwan The government yesterday welcomed Pope Francis to the Asia-Pacific region and said it would continue extending an invitation for him to visit Taiwan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the remarks as Pope Francis began a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific on Monday. He is to travel about 33,000km by air to visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, and would arrive back in Rome on Friday next week. It would be the longest and most challenging trip of Francis’ 11-year papacy. The 87-year-old has had health issues over the past few years and now uses a wheelchair. The ministry said
TAIWANESE INNOVATION: The ‘Seawool’ fabric generates about NT$200m a year, with the bulk of it sourced by clothing brands operating in Europe and the US Growing up on Taiwan’s west coast where mollusk farming is popular, Eddie Wang saw discarded oyster shells transformed from waste to function — a memory that inspired him to create a unique and environmentally friendly fabric called “Seawool.” Wang remembered that residents of his seaside hometown of Yunlin County used discarded oyster shells that littered the streets during the harvest as insulation for their homes. “They burned the shells and painted the residue on the walls. The houses then became warm in the winter and cool in the summer,” the 42-year-old said at his factory in Tainan. “So I was
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
RSS