Tien Giang Province in the Mekong Delta hosted the first ever national fruit festival in My Tho city from April 19 to 24

Tran Hoa Huy, a member of the organization board, said the festival would welcome over 100,000 guests and tourists. There are 350 rooms available for accommodation in My Tho City and in nearby provinces such as Long An, Ben Tre and HCMC. The recently opened Trung Luong Expressway makes My Tho City only a 40 minute drive from HCMC.

With more than 700 stalls, the event displayed 2,000 tons of fruit from 24 provinces, including the well-known Hoa Loc mangoes, Lo Ren Vinh Kim star-apples, Chin Hoa durians and Hung Yen longans. Also, the festival features agricultural products and plant exhibitions, food fairs, firework displays and festivities at Cai Be floating market. Several national records are expected to be set during the festival too, including the largest map of Vietnam and the longest dragon made entirely of fruit.

There would also be an awards ceremony to honor farmers, scientists and enterprises who have contributed to research and planting processes to deliver high-quality Vietnamese fruit to both local and global markets.

Nguyen Minh Chau, head of the Southern Fruit Research Institute, said the country, and especially the Mekong Delta, boasts a wide variety of good fruit owing to favorable climate and soil.

Vietnam has a total of 776,000 hectares under fruit cultivation and can increase competitiveness compared to leading exporters Thailand and China if it invests more into seedling research, modern techniques and brand building.

The Fruit Festival will host a series of seminars on developing trademarks for Vietnamese fruit on the global market and measures to create and strengthen links between scientists, farmers, processors and local authorities to increase value.

This festival is set to become a five-yearly event.