Head of the Agriculture, Food Crops and Plantation office Yohana Paliling said his office would prepare all the equipment needed in the trial operation.
Yohana said active operation will start next year in processing Buah Merah supplied from other district in Papua.
Mixture of Buah Merah or Pandanus Conoideus in scientific name, is Immune System booster, Improves Stamina, Fights Cancer Cells.
Buah Merah is found only in Papua and it was known only to other regions outside Papua over the past several years to be effective in healing a number of disease.
"In line with the Development Planning Meeting of Special Autonomy of Papua in 2017, Mimika has been named as Buah Merah processing center and ti start in 2018," Yohana said.
A number of tests of processing have succeeded in producing a good quality extract including in sanitation, Yohana said.
However, a number of supporting facilities are still needed to be built such as packing and storage room for the processed fruits, she said.
"We already have a processing machine as an aid from the provincial administration in 2015, which has a big processing capacity," she said.
She said hopefully the processing of Buah Merah in Timika would be fully operational early next year with fruits supplied from neighboring districts like Panjang, Deyai and Dogiya.
"Hopefully the Trans Paniai-Timika would soon be connected to facilitate the transport of Buah Merah especially from the mountainous regions," Yohana said.(*)
Editor: Heru Purwanto
Copyright © ANTARA 2017
