Table grapes exporting season starting in Egypt 2016

Table grapes exporting season starting in Egypt

Table grapes are one of the most widely-grown fruit crops in Egypt. It’s considered to be the second most important fruit crop after citrus. Egyptian’s geographical spread of production enables fresh sweet grapes to be available From May to July. Table grapes are grown from Alexandria in the north of Egypt to Aswan in the south. There are many varieties of table grapes produced in Egypt, like Early sweet, Superior, Thompson, Flame seedless, Crimson, and Red globe. Competition among Egyptian growers is tough. There’s always more competition every year because of the new grape plantations coming into production every year, so the only thing that keeps one ahead of others in the market is the ability of producing high quality grapes. This season, Egypt had a cold winter which was good for both the homogenized bud break and the high fertility.

This month, a new season is starting in Egypt for the main export destinations such as the European Union (UK, Netherlands, Italy…………), Russia, and Gulf region (Emirates). Grapes can be picked, packed and air freighted to markets within 60-72 hours of harvest. Shipping to the Middle East countries takes almost 48-60 hours. Egypt exports around 7% from the total volume of produced grape. In 2013, the total volume of the exported grape was around 80,000 tonnes.

Challenges for the Egyptian grape exporters in 2016

While it’s early to inform how quality of most of the fruits will turn out, it’s expected that this year’s volume and quality to be just as good if not better than in previous years. In the last season (2015), Egyptian suppliers faced political unrests which disrupted the tail-end of their shipments. This year 2016, the Egyptian presidential elections will be held on 26-27 May, virtually after one month from the beginning of the Egyptian grape exporting season.  Also The Indian grape exports to Europe in 2014 are higher than the past four years which expected to affect the exports from the Egyptian grape.

The role of AGQ Labs in the Egyptian grape sector

Through our local office in Egypt, AGQ Labs provide the Egyptian grape producers with analytical services besides the Agronomic specified consultancy related to plant nutrition from the beginning of the table grape production season, by providing water, soil, and foliar analytical services with different scopes.

AGQ Labs analyzes more than 100,000 samples for multiresidues globally each year. With such reach, our expertise in this field is extensive, as well as the worldwide database of results which we accumulate for many crops. These days, AGQ Egypt provides the multiresidues analytical services to the table grape exporters. Our multiresidues lists provide 345 active ingredients per analysis, including pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides. Other active substances are not included in these broad-spectrum multiresidues methods (like Fosetyl-Al, Ethephon, etc.) because alternative extraction techniques must be employed to determine the presence and quantity of the active ingredient.

To enable our clients to get the maximum benefit from their analytical results, our web-based analytical services platform, BeSafer, is the effective tool we provide them with to quickly and easily manage their analytical data. BeSafer enables clients to organize their laboratory results (per supplier(s), location(s), sampling points, crops, etc), contrast those results with reference values and/or specific regulations, create graphs and other visual statistics.