Horticultural Fresh Produce

Horticultural fresh produce are fruits and vegetables specifically produced for fresh consumption such as telferia (fluted pumpkin), cucumber, sweet pepper, tomatoes, citrus, banana, pineapple, cabbage, green bean, etc. This branch of horticulture is basically production and marketing. In fresh produce industry, production is according to standard (Global GAP Codes and Procedures) and its majorly carried-out under controlled and monitored environment.

Nigeria is among the world leading producers of tropical fruits and vegetables though not a major exporting country, but has the capacity to lead the world in fresh produce especially the crops Nigeria has comparative advantage.

To position Nigeria to tap from the volume of the world fresh produce, the Horticulture Transformation in collaboration with relevant Agencies intends to develop appropriate policy framework and marketing infrastructure for fresh produce, such as localGAP (NigeriaGAP) for production standard, Competent Authority (Centre of Excellence) for quality control and traceability, and Food Legislation to ensure compliance of food safety and export of horticultural fresh produce.

The vision is to be achieved through component activities in production and marketing that will be driven by Public-Private Partnership. The strategies/activities include:

Production

• Build capacities of farmers on Global Good Agricultural Practices (Global GAP), Codes and Procedures to ensure high quality horticultural fresh produce for local and international markets;
• Promote organic agriculture to address the emerging concerns of consumers on sustainable food safety;
• Promote production structure/technologies (nethouses, drippers, cold storage facilities, transport/logistics, etc) for fresh produce production;

Nethouses
Tomato Production in Nethouse with Irrigation facilities

  Marketing:

• Transportation and logistics particularly for fresh produce;
• Marketing infrastructure such as cold facilities including sorting, packing and storage houses; etc