(Agraria.pe) Reaching first place as the world's largest blueberry exporter has been a reward for the Peruvian agribusiness, and it is also a point that opens the door to a new level of challenges in the markets, both from the productive and business point of view.

Claudio Yáñez, agricultural engineer, specialist in blueberry quality and postharvest, has decades of trajectory touring the berry fields in his native Chile and now also in Peru, finding points of contact, as well as a variety of challenges.

"Peruvian and Chilean fruit must travel a long time, the markets are long distances away, which forces us to be rigorous in the handling and segregation of the fruit, the low-harvest tools, the cold chain, and the consolidation of shipments. which is the last point in which we as companies have control over the production chain to arrive with the necessary physical and organoleptic characteristics”, he comments.

Throughout the blueberry chain, he details, a crucial point is the harvest, which must take place at the correct time, as well as segregation, in order to know which market to send each fruit to. To this is added the management in the packing plant with sanitization and cold management, up to the packaging lines, the use of fungicides, definitions of modified and controlled atmospheres, among others.

However, there are aspects that can escape the management of the exporter, such as complications in the transfer, as happened especially last year with the shipping companies, which had long delays and there were stretches that lasted 24 days and began to be made in 40 days. which was to the detriment of the fruit.

One more layer of unmanageable complexity is added at the destination, when the product is finally delivered, and where factors such as the cold chain are sometimes not adequately managed. In Europe and the United States this is well controlled, but in other places it is not. "In the Far East, sometimes when the container arrives it is unplugged, the fruit is lowered, it is sold and what is not returned to the container loses the cold chain," he says.

Caludio Yáñez considers that Peru currently has a "mature and bold" blueberry industry, which has relied heavily on the previous experience of its producing neighbor to the south. “Peru has taken a lot from Chile's experience, the good, and discarded the bad; and what is better, the good has been improved”.

As part of this improvement, it points to the third varietal replacement that the Peruvian blueberry industry is already experiencing, leaving Biloxi and Ventura behind for new genetics that want to get closer to the production of a fruit that is more tailored to what the consumer wants in terms of size, flavor and bloom.

In this way, he adds, both the immediate and medium-term future must be planned, since this year the climatic disturbances may delay the harvest in some northern regions and accumulate stocks with other areas in a very tight window. And also define the steps towards the goal of reaching 500 tons exported, with a projection of close to 350 tons already next year, which calls for a careful preparation of marketing plans and post-harvest handling for a fruit that will have to endure much longer to market.