Muscat: Oman will be intensifying its food monitoring, after the United Arab Emirates banned some Omani vegetables and fruits on Monday after saying some of the products exceeded maximum residue limits (MRL) of pesticides.
Pesticide levels in imported melons, watercress and carrots from Oman were found to be above the allowable limits.
“More than 1,600 samples taken from commercial farms nationwide were tested and we found that 98 per cent of the samples conform to internationally permissible limits,” the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries said in a statement.
The Ministry affirmed that more samples will be taken from commercial farms in the country at different stages of production to make sure that they also conform to the permissible limits.
On Thursday, Ahmad Bin Nasser Al Bakri, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries met Mohammad Al Suwaidi, the Ambassador of the United Arab Emirates to Oman to discuss the details behind the ban, and to obtain the sources of the samples that were found to have contained excessive pesticide residue.
A tender has also been recently issued to establish a Central Laboratory for Plant Health, to control the safety of the agricultural products.
On Monday, the UAE had announced that fruits found with pesticides residues above the permissible limits will be banned from being imported into the UAE from May 15.
Egypt, Oman, Jordan, Lebanon and Yemen will be impacted by the ban.
The agreement between the UAE and Oman since 2010 stipulates that specific produce from Oman must come with a certificate indicating the amount of pesticide residue.
The measures have dramatically improved the safety of Oman’s exported produce.
Oman’s agriculture sector was worth 0.9 per cent of GDP in 2016, according to the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI).
Oman’s Vision 2020 has set a target of raising agriculture’s contribution to GDP to 3.1 per cent by 2020.
