Pepper Plant in Cambodia

In Cambodia pepper has been planted since the first decade of the twentieth century. It is one of the main paid works for farmers and helped developing social economic of the country. The soil and climate condition of Cambodia are well-suited for the cultivation of pepper in several area in some provinces like, KampongCham (MeMut), Kampot (KampongTralach), KampongSom, Rattanakiri and Mondulkiri, where abundance of soil and rainfall create ideal condition for pepper cultivation.

The pepper plant is commonly known as a long-live woody vine, it grow by supporting trees, poles or trellises. The leaves are alternated, which look likes the betel leaf, greenish and beautiful. The flower is small with white color, produced as fruits on pendulous long spikes at the leaf nodes. Typically, pepper plant bear fruits for seven years; it starts from the fourth or fifth year after planted. On the harvest season, farmers collected pepper fruits before it mature by pick up spikes, and then spread out in the sun for stripped off pepper corns from the spikes after it dried.
Mr. Buth Samoeun, 57 years old who lived in AngkorChay 2 village, KampongTralach district, Kampot province, is a successful farmer on pepper plantation. He had got experience in 30 years with his parents on technical of cultivation as well as the formula to make peppercorn’s products. With about 1 hectare red soil farm, he planted hundred of clumps pepper which is growing greenish and produced the great pendulous spikes fruits. He continues that, typically it can bear fruit from the third year after planted. It started flowering from May to July, and bears fruits from December to February of the next year. So the harvest takes time from unripe fruit till it become mature. We can harvest three times per year within seven months.
As the demand of the market, Mr. Samoeun produced varieties of peppercorns products such as white pepper, red pepper, and black pepper by using the simple local formula.
White pepper is made from the fully ripe pepper, clean it with water after collected, then removed the black outer layer, and dried it in the sun for 3-4 days.
Red pepper is made by selected of ripe pepper for boiling in 5 minutes, then dried in the sun until it becomes red color.
Black pepper made from unripe drupes. Usually choose the dark green color pepper fruit, and dried it in the sun for several days, it will become great dark black color and have a good spicy flavor.
Related to the prices of pepper on local market, 1kg of black pepper costs about $ 10, red pepper is about $15 and white pepper is about $ 20. With his small pepper farm, Samoeun can earn from USD$3000-5000 per year.
Cambodia’s peppercorn is great with big seed and spicy. However, the exportation of Cambodia pepper product is still a challenge regarding their integration into global supply and value chain, even it is good of quantities of available product as well as of quality. Actually, it has been collected by merchants from Vietnam who required large amount of black pepper for the exportation to worldwide which made the pepper’s price inconstant. However, the extensively cultivated pepper is now the great change for some Cambodia farmers’ lifestyle which earns more money for their livelihood.[ by sroknuon]