Page 36 - SA Fruit Journal VOLUME 14

Online market registrations for the citrus industryPAuL hARDmANFor markets that require pre-registration Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF) Directorate Plant Health(PH) agreed to introduce a web-based tool for PUC and orchard registrations for the 2015 citrus export season as an alternative to the manual systems used in previous years. The tool was developed by DAFF: PH in conjunc- tion with the CGA in order to make the regis- tration process more efficient and accurate.In summary 89.5 percent of growers used the online tool. DAFF: PH captured the re- maining paper-based applications onto the same web-based tool so all the data is housed in the same database. The overall view is that the registration process worked extremely well despite some early teething issues. Some improvements were identified and will be taken into consideration for next year.One advantage of an electronic registra- tion tool is to be able to analyse the data. This next section provides some basic informa- tion on the registration applications.Descriptive StatisticsThis data has been taken off the draft summa- ry of the registration applications on 4th De- cember 2014 and is subject to change beforethe start of actual exports in 2015. TABLE 1 shows the number of PUCs per province, to- tal orchards per province and the application status of those orchards per market (those that require pre-registration). “Provisional” registrations are subject to further changes to the import protocols while “pending” indi- cates applications that must still be approved before 2015.Improvements on the 2013 registration processA number of indicators highlight the im- provement using an online tool compared to the paper-based systems, including:• Growers have more influence over the ac- curacy of the data entering the system. After all they are the ones that know their farms best.• Improved accuracy in spelling of varie- ties. In 2013 approximately 560 “different” cultivars were listed (including 64 different spellings and combinations of Bahianinha navels). In 2014 only 118 cultivars are listed (and only one version of Bahianinha!). This does not reflect a change in the Citrus Export Quality Standards, but rather improved ad- herence to the Standards.• All data was captured by 15th November 2015. In previous years it was a huge struggle to complete the process by end of November.• Growers were afforded the opportunity to check/verify the information on two weeks earlier and for two weeks longer than in pre- vious years.• Tree census: 90% of the tree census was completed in October 2014. It was most un- fortunate that the paper-based applications did not all capture the orchard area. In future a 100% of the information will be captured in a one-step process.However, the greatest value of the online reg- istration tool and having the data reside in a single database is the potential it unlocks to create integrated tools to make other aspects of the export and certification process more effective and efficient. For example, this data can be used by DAFF regional offices to plan farm verification visits.Growers that made the leap and used the online tool are thanked for making the change this year. Now that the data is on the central database it is expected that future rounds of registrations will be considerably easier.TABLE 1iTem eASTeRN kZN LimPoPo mPumA NoRTh NoRTheRN WeSTeRN CAPe LANGA WeST CAPe CAPeToTALPUC 720 48 434 101 17 36 543 1 899TOTAL ORCHARDS 9 191 478 7 341 1 426 60 273 3 824 22 593CHINA (PENDING) 9 178 476 7 247 1 382 59 251 2 823 21 416EU (PENDING) 8 311 396 6 246 988 53 273 3 824 20 091IRAN 8 608 367 6 743 1 380 52 143 3 029 20 322JAPAN 8 193 460 6 519 1 084 23 208 2 021 18 508PHILIPPINES (PROVISIONAL) 8 601 338 6 357 1 331 58 160 2 231 19 076SOUTH KOREA (PENDING) 21 421 5 313 826 5 62 6 648THAILAND (PENDING) 9 181 410 6 733 1 325 55 160 2 132 19 996USA (PROVISIONAL) 8 573 215 5 148 956 50 107 15 049USA 258 3 268 3 526MARKETING 33 FEB | MARCH 2015MARKETINGnews/markte