OREANDA-NEWS. The Ecuadorian Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock is interested in maintaining the volume and quality of banana supplies from the South American republic to Russia and is ready to work on solving existing technical problems. This is stated in a message posted on Tuesday on the website of the local regulator on issues of zoo and phytosanitary control.

Russian agricultural supervision on November 27 announced a possible restriction on the import of plant products from Ecuador, including bananas, the main supplier of which is this country - it accounts for 96% of imports (almost 1.5 million tons last year). The department associated this with the discovery of a pest in the products - a polyphagous humpback fly.

According to Agrocalidad, Ecuador provides control in accordance with the International Standards for Phytosanitary Measures (ISPM) in all 78 directions of export of its bananas. From 2014 to November 2019, the republic sold abroad about 70 million tons of this type of fruit, of which more than 7.8 million tons were sent to Russia. Not one of the more than 600 thousand phytosanitary export certificates received notifications of Megaselia scalaris pest detection, the agency assures.