Chinese experts meet President Zardari

President Asif Ali Zardari has said that enhancing storage capability would increase the shelf life of fruit and agricultural produce and empower the farmer by relieving him from the pressures of middlemen to sell their produce cheap. He said this during briefing on the Chinese model of Controlled Atmosphere Storage capability in the Presidency on Saturday. The meeting was attended by Chinese experts Ms Celine Wang, Ms Linda Deng and Mr. Jian Pang, Mr. Kamal Majidullah, Special Advisor to Prime Minister on Water Resources and senior government officials. Spokesperson to the President former Senator Farhatullah Babar said that the President called for a feasibility study be carried out on the adoption of Controlled Atmosphere Storage capability. The visiting Chinese delegation informed the meeting that they had visited Tando Allahyar, Mirpurkhas, Okara, Sahiwal and Gilgit to propose plans for controlled atmosphere storage units for food preservation of locally produced fruits and foods. Empowering the disadvantaged sections of society is a matter of high priority with the government, the President said and added the farmers and peasants being vulnerable sections must be empowered and rid of exploitation by vested interests. He said that he saw in the project an opportunity to empower farmers and advised the government to consider ways and means to speed it up. Farhatullah Babar said that the Chinese technology is based on the knowledge that there are different atmospheric conditions that can increase the shelf life of different fruits and foods by almost ten times. The technique lies in determining the exact atmospheric condition for each fruit variety and then applying it to that particular variety. Experiments have shown that controlled atmospheric conditions could preserve the quality and taste of different fruits and foods to several months.