More fruit for their labour

"They look close to dead," says Sri Lankan farmer Shantha Dissanayake looking at his pruned mango trees.

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Shantha has spent a lot of time worrying about elephants stomping over his mango orchards.

But he became even more scared when agricultural experts came from abroad and hacked his trees down to relative shadows of their former selves. The trees are much shorter than before, with fewer but wider branches that allow sunlight to boost fruit quality and naturally prevent plant diseases.

Zengxian Zhao, the man who cut the trees in the first place, laughed at Shantha's memory of the event. “He was initially shocked, but he's been convinced and is spreading the word,” said Zengxian, an expert on crop cultivation.

This pruning method is one of the new techniques being shared through the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)-China South-South Cooperation project, aiming to boost the incomes of farmers who produce bananas, pineapples and mangoes, high-value fruits that can flourish in the country.

The whole project, which includes innovations in Sri Lanka's banana, mango and pineapple sectors, is emblematic of the South-South Cooperation theme, consisting of technology transfer, precision agriculture, legal trading norms, transportation and marketing methods and the adoption and upscaling of good agricultural practices.