The success follows a joint effort by Agricultural and Processed Food Export Development Authority (APEDA) and Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI). "Japan wanted us to conduct VHT to try and eliminate the incidence of oriental fly. We have conducted the tests successfully," said commerce ministry secretary SM Acharya. Japan had banned imports of Indian mangoes on the ground that the "king of fruits" from the subcontinent carries "oriental fly", a type of beetle present in the fruit from the flowering stage of the mango tree.

The ban, was enforced over three years now on health grounds. Commerce secretary PP Prabhu told the National Conference for Agriculture on Kharif Campaign 1999 last month that India was unable to tap its vast potential in mango exports toJapan in view of the ban. World famous alphonso, dusseri, banganapalli and neelam are among the varieties which have responded positively to VHT. B Lal, IARI coordinator for mango projects, said small scale and large scale VHT had been conducted to eliminate the beetles present in the mangoes. "Nine varieties have responded positively to small scale tests. The Japanese have accepted the results. As far large scale tests are concerned, they have raised certain queries regarding two varieties," he said. Japan had earliler helped India to set up the pilot project for VHT.

The success in conducting VHT comes at a time when various mango-growing centres have reported a very good grop this year. Ban on imports of agro-products are legally valid under World Trade Organisation (WTO) norms on sanitary and phyto-sanitary grounds. While India has successfully conducted VHT to try and lift the ban on imports into Japan, it is yet to find a way out to get over a similar ban by the US.

Washington has banned import ofIndian mangoes for presence of "stone weevil" Lal said lack of additional hands had hampered IARI in carrying out tests to overcome the "stone weevil" problem. If Japan revokes the ban, export of mangoes are likely to receive a major boost.