Malaysia will soon begin exporting durian to mainland China, which currently only buys the thorny fruit from Thailand, a minister said today.

Agriculture and Agro-based Industries Minister Noh Omar said for years, the Malaysian government had been trying to export durians to China, but only the initiatives taken by Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak were coming to fruition.

“The prime minister proposed that during official visits to China, we should bring along Malaysian durians to be tasted by top Chinese leaders, including Prime Minister Wen Jiabao.

“True enough, after they tasted the fruit, they started to show interest and we received the approval letter from the Chinese government on May 11,” he told reporters after presenting the prizes for the winners of ‘Agro Xplorasi’ television quiz show at Bandar Utama in Petaling Jaya today.

Noh said the fruit would be exported to China between July and September as it would be the peak season of the Malaysian durians.

The export of durians to China will be managed by the Federal Agricultural Marketing Authority (Fama) as it would involve a very large quantity, he said.

According to Fama director-general Ahmad Ishak, Malaysia currently produced 300,000 tonnes of durians, with revenue estimated at RM1.3 billion annually, but it was still insufficient.

“We will export two types of frozen durian with seed or seedless, involving ‘durian kampung’ and durian clones from Pahang, Johor and Perak,” he said.

Meanwhile, the ‘Agro Xplorasi" television programme, which began on Feb 26 and ended on April 30, managed to attract an average of 500,000 viewers weekly.

The 10-episode programme was produced by the Agriculture and Agro-based Industries Ministry with the cooperation of TV3.

- Agencies