Despite possessing outstanding commercial advantages, many of Vietnam's fruit industries, such as durian and pineapple, are still struggling with the problem of sustainable development due to loopholes in intellectual property copyright for plant varieties.

To secure sustainable income from these crops, it is time for regulatory agencies, enterprises, and especially cooperatives to seriously look at variety ownership rights to position Vietnamese agricultural products on the global supply chain map.

One of the crops with a large room in Vietnam is pineapple. Stretching from North to South, pineapples appear in almost all regions, from Queen pineapples in Kien Giang and Hau Giang (former) to Cayen pineapples in the "pineapple capital" of Tam Diep (Ninh Binh).

Reality from the pineapple tree

According to statistics, Vietnam has about 52,000 hectares of pineapples, with an output of around 750,000 tons/year, and a strategic planning target of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development to reach 55,000 - 60,000 hectares by 2030. This is a commodity sector with growth room of 5-6% each year thanks to biological characteristics that are highly adaptive to the context of harsh climate change.

On the international trade scale, pineapples occupy a market share equivalent to oranges—one of the most popular fruits in the world. The consumption demand for pineapples in large markets such as Europe, the US, Japan, and China can be described as endless.

In Tam Diep (Ninh Binh province), statistics from the local agricultural sector show that pineapple trees account for up to about 60% of the fruit tree planting area, with a total area of up to approximately 3,600 hectares, attracting more than 1,700 households to participate in linked production. The total annual output from pineapple trees here reaches from 55,000 to 60,000 tons of commercial pineapples.

Currently, two main variety groups are being cultivated as core crops: Cayen pineapples (accounting for about 1,900 hectares, large fruits weighing 1.5 - 1.8 kg, specialized for export industrial processing) and Queen pineapples (accounting for about 1,700 hectares, small fruits, deeply sweet, intensely fragrant, serving fresh consumption). The "Dong Giao Pineapple" product has been granted a Geographical Indication Registration Certificate by the Intellectual Property Office, affirming its position as a national specialty.

However, behind those figures of tens of thousands of tons of output, the story of sustainable added value still encounters an invisible barrier: The shortage of high-quality copyrighted variety sets satisfying fresh export standards.

According to Ms. Nguyen Thi Thanh Thuc, Chairwoman of AutoAgri Software Technology Joint Stock Company, for farmers or cooperatives to achieve a net profit of several hundred million VND/hectare/year from pineapple trees, the first core factor deciding success or failure is precisely the variety.

In reality, the gross revenue from traditional pineapple trees currently fluctuates around 150 - 200 million VND/hectare; after deducting fertilizer and labor costs, the actual remaining net profit is not too high. To achieve a revenue of 300 - 400 million VND/hectare/year, it is mandatory to cultivate next-generation pineapple variety sets that possess outstanding productivity, high fruit pulp recovery rates, and satisfy the strict tastes of the world.

Mr. Dau Phi Canh, Director of AE TA Agricultural Product Cooperative (Nghe An), stated that currently, the MD2 pineapple variety (yellow, mildly sweet, shallow eyes, eating without burning the tongue) is leading the global fresh pineapple market. A large number of enterprises, linked organizations, and cooperatives in Vietnam recognized this trend early and are aggressively shifting strongly toward investing in and planting MD2 pineapples.

However, a reality is that Vietnam is falling into a situation of thirsting for standard MD2 pineapple seed sources to satisfy market demand. Due to not yet mastering the technology for breeding domestic copyrighted parent stocks, accessing disease-free seed sources possessing high genetic uniformity and carrying full legal certifications regarding variety copyright ownership remains an extremely difficult equation for the majority of agricultural cooperatives today.

To export, seed sources must be legal

Ms. Nguyen Thi Thanh Thuc frankly stated that without proactively researching and developing varieties with copyright ownership, not only the pineapple industry but many other sectors in Vietnam cannot develop sustainably. Currently, the issue of traceability regarding variety copyright is becoming increasingly favorable thanks to support from technology to control fraud.

Vietnamese farmers inherently still maintain the habit of keeping seeds by themselves, spontaneously sharing seeds with each other, or buying floating seed sources on the free market. This practice causes unpredictable consequences when stepping onto the global playing field.

When signing free trade agreements or exporting via official channels to large markets, one of the prerequisite conditions that international buyers demand is that agricultural products must be grown from legal seed sources protected under intellectual property rights.

Ms. Nguyen Thi Thu Lien, representative of the Association of Transparent Food (AFT), warned: Intentionally or unintentionally utilizing "pirated" seeds or seeds with unclear legal origins will immediately strip the export rights of enterprises and cooperatives at international border gates. Not stopping there, these units also have to face prolonged international intellectual property dispute lawsuits, suffering serious financial damage and completely losing national brand reputation.

Practical lessons from other commodity sectors always remain highly topical. For instance, the story of the LD1 red-flesh dragon fruit variety when the growing zone copyright was tightened for the Japanese and South Korean export markets, causing a series of cooperatives in Southern provinces to fall into output congestion at times.

Even for the pineapple industry, owning intellectual property assets such as the "Dong Giao Pineapple" Geographical Indication No. 00074 also demands an extremely tight management process. The right to use this trademark is only granted to units and collective economic organizations located within the strict geographical area (such as Tam Diep city, Phu Long commune - Ninh Binh) and strictly complying with specific quality regulations. The involvement of organizations like the Tam Diep Organic Agriculture Cooperative or agricultural service cooperatives in the area to control processes and protect labels serves as the shield protecting the reputation of local agricultural products.

Resolving the copyright equation, agricultural products confidently export

According to experts, in the digital era, national and international database systems on growing area codes and gene sequencing technology to identify plant variety identities have reached absolute accuracy.

A container of fruit upon arriving at a European port can completely be randomly sampled for inspection. If a variety of copyright violation is detected, the entire shipment will be destroyed and the exporting enterprise and cooperative will be placed on the "black list."

To thoroughly resolve this bottleneck and head toward the goal of prioritizing sustainable development for the pineapple industry in particular and Vietnamese agricultural products in general, Ms. Nguyen Thi Thanh Thuc argued that research and variety development work with copyright ownership in Vietnam needs to be more invested in. When and only when the variety copyright equation is resolved can Vietnamese agricultural products confidently step out into the world with a dignified, legitimate position, bringing sustainable economic value and substantial wealth generation for millions of farming households and cooperative members across the country.

For citizens and cooperatives, it is necessary to completely alter production mindsets: Absolutely do not utilize floating seed sources of unknown origin. Going hand in hand with that is the need to proactively link chains with research institutes and enterprises holding legal copyrights to purchase genetically standard seeds to create a solid foundation for the commodity value chain.

Source: Vnbusiness