Vietnam and Israel have made a strong commitment to promoting agricultural cooperation, especially in high-tech agriculture and seeds.

The pledge was made at talks between Vietnamese Agriculture and Rural Development Minister Cao Duc Phat and his Israeli counterpart Yair Shamir in Hanoi on October 31.

The two ministers highly valued their agricultural cooperation and expressed a desire to develop it into a comprehensive cooperation.

During the talks, the visiting minister said Israel wants to promote agricultural research cooperation with Vietnam and increase its farming exports to Vietnam . Israel is also interested in intellectual property cooperation with Vietnam , added Shamir.

For his part, Phat suggested Israel assists Vietnam in irrigation. He said the application of Israel ’s advanced watering techniques should be expanded to 10 million hectares across Vietnam by 2020.

The Vietnamese minister also asked the guest side to continue offering training courses on agricultural processing and post harvest technologies, or climate change and soil salinity for Vietnamese workers.

Minister Phat said Vietnam ’s agricultural development trend in the coming time is to boost its export activities and ready itself to import agricultural produce and machinery from Israel .

Israel has provided many training courses for Vietnam in the field of agriculture over their 20 years of diplomatic relations. Since 2008, Vietnam has sent over 2,000 workers on study tours to Israel . Israel has also cooperated with Vietnam in many research projects relating to dairy and greenhouse.-VNA