Peru’s national agricultural sanity service (SENASA in Spanish) will send Japan’s government a study of its grape and citrus crops in the first quarter of 2011 in hopes of opening the market to its fruit, local news agency Andina reported.

The study details cold treatment procedures on citrus and table grapes being carried out according to Japanese protocol.

The grape entry would focus on Red Globe and is in the final process of translation, the report quoted SENASA head Oscar Domínguez as saying.

For citrus the study will focus on Satsuma mandarins and Tangelo. Currently Peru exports citrus only to Hong Kong and hopes to start competing with Australia and South Africa in Japan.

In addition Peru hopes to persuade Japan’s government to recognize a study performed by the U.S.’ Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) and SENASA to show that the Hass avocado is not a vector for fruit fly contamination.

Source: www.freshfruitportal.com