Description:

Mr. Le Van Hoa is 68 years old,  from Son Dinh Commune in Ben Tre province's Cho Lach District, is also known a "bare-foot scientist."

Through self-learning, he has created new farming techniques which have brought about high value products for fruit growers, especially green-skinned grapefruit — the province's specialty.

In 1998, Mr. Hoa decided to chop down all the trees in the garden and plant grapefruit instead for its high quality and high yield, his wife said. He believed that it soon would become popular with Vietnamese consumers in the future.

Three years later, he began experiments on the grapefruits. He found a new method to make grapefruit trees bloom at a selected branch.

"My technique is cutting off leaves on optimal branches to determine fruit locations. By doing this, I can have bigger fruit and better quality than normal ones," he said.

The technique was promptly appreciated by scientists and researchers and widely applied to local farmers and surrounding areas.

Not satisfied with the success, he tried to learn new methods to improve the fruit's quality.

Then, the idea of creating a seedless grapefruit variety arose on his mind.

Assuming that green-skinned grapefruits have no seeds in nature and may be cross pollinated, leading the fruits to have seeds, Hoa started to use zinc nets and special "cages" to cover the flowers to prevent bees from interfering with the tree's self-pollination.

The result was a big surprise as he got seedless grapefruit on the first trial in 2007.

"Cutting off leaves to determine fruit locations and covering the fruits with nets to prevent direct sunlight helps not only retain the green colour of the fruit but also avoid insect infection," he said.

Mr. Hoa got yearly income of VND400 million (US$18,000) from selling seedless grapefruits in the 5,000-sq.m garden. He also earned around VND300 million ($13,600) a year from selling saplings.

His name is closely link to Hai Hoa green-skin grapefruit. That’s kind of grapefruit earned him the first prize in a good grapefruit variety competition organised by the Southern Fruit Research Institute in 2005.

Applied field: Agriculture