Edilberto Rodil Silan started the Dragon Fruit business six years ago, he started by trying out the trimmings of the plant from the 5 hectare farm in Tambo Balagbag of a Chinese Businessman, Mr. Alex Liton who first brought Dragon Fruit with imported planting materials from Taiwan.
Mr. Silan together with former Governor Juanito Remulla, experimented on how to grow the Dragon Fruit themselves since they have no idea yet if the exotic fruit can manage their local planting resources. The two must have green thumbs as they have grown the fruits successfully in the Cavite Uplands.
People’s familiarity with the Dragon Fruit.
Since the fruit is not common in the Philippines, locals were not patronizing it. Many years ago, farmers tried introducing Dragon Fruit in wet markets selling it for a humble price of almost as low as P20 per kilo on visually morphed or slightly damaged ones. It was only the foreigners especially the Chinese, Taiwanese and Vietnamese who avidly bought the produce. Mr. Silan added that the first Cavite city/town that accepted the Dragon Fruit in the market was Tagaytay City probably because its growing 1st class population, including tourists.
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