“This is the most expensive and rarest seedless lychee season ever,” Tran Thi Ngoc Chau, a fruit trader in HCMC, said.
She has sold the fruit for years but never found sourcing it as difficult as this year. But despite the high prices, many customers placed orders early, and she could not meet their demand, she said.
Hoang Oanh, a trader, said she had accepted orders in advance, but, shortly before harvest, many orchards reported crop failures and said they could not deliver. So, she had to cancel many orders, she said.
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Seedless lychee in Thanh Hoa Province, Vietnam. Photo by Duc Thuy |
Many people are searching to buy the fruit but without success. Hoa, a local resident, planned to buy five kilograms of seedless lychees as gifts for business partners, but could not find it and had to opt for another fruit.
“I asked three stores that used to sell seedless lychees, but they said they could not source any.”
This year’s lychee crop has suffered widespread losses. The Plant Production and Protection Department said unfavorable weather affected flower bud differentiation, flowering, and fruit setting.
Vietnam has 55,000 hectares under lychee, mainly in northern provinces. The output has fallen sharply in many of the key growing areas, with some recording declines of more than half year-on-year.
Ho Guom – Song Am Company in the central province of Thanh Hoa is the only firm to cultivate and commercialize the fruit since 2023, but it too has only limited quantities to sell.
Some areas, such as Bac Ninh Province, have been trying to grow the fruit but without notable success.
Explaining the shortage, Bui Duc Thuy, deputy director of Ho Guom – Song Am, said many northern lychee-growing areas have been hit by extreme weather this year, with some areas losing up to 90% of their crop.
At the company’s seedless lychee growing area in Thanh Hoa, the initial flowering rate had been a mere 27% before prolonged heat followed by thunderstorms during the fruit-setting stage caused young fruits to shed in large numbers.
As a result, the company’s seedless lychee output this year was only one ton, down from around seven tons last year.
The tight supply pushed wholesale prices to more than VND600,000 per kilogram, double the VND310,000 in the same period last year.
Thuy said the harvest was so small that the company could not fulfill its pre-season orders. He also warned consumers to be cautious about products advertised as seedless lychees.
Sourcee.vnexpress.net
