Up to ten consignments of 20 tonnes of Moldovan apples or plums each were returned from the Russian Federation last year after detecting quarantine organisms in them, IPN reports, with reference to the National Food Safety Agency.

The Agency’s specialists said that samples from the fruit are collected before authorizing the export of stone fruit and these are analyzed by the Central Phytosanitary Laboratory for detecting harmful organisms. The quarantine organisms found by the phytosanitary bodies of Russia do not have the same status in Moldova. The returned consignments of fruit are examined and, if no harmful organisms are identified in them, the fruit can be sold on the local market or processed.

Contacted by IPN for a comment, the head of the Agency’s Plants Protection Division Svetlana Lungu said that given the large quantities of fruit exported to Russia, the return percentage is not so large. If the batches are sent back, it does not mean that the whole batch didn’t comply. It is enough for one fruit to be affected and the whole consignment is returned.

In 2020, Moldova exported 208,209 tonnes of fresh apples to Kazakhstan, Belarus, Russia, Mongolia, and Uzbekistan and another 1,839 tonnes to Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, and Romania. There were also exported 34,355 tonnes of plums to Russia, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and Croatia. Another 21,154 tonnes of plums were exported to Austria Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Hungary.

In a response to an inquiry made by IPN, the National Food Safety Agency says the exports of vegetal products in 2020 were lower than in 2019 owing to the drought and the natural calamities experienced by Moldova last summer. As a result, exports declined to 60% of the value of the 2019 exports.