Noun/pronoun disagreement and ambiguity

Malaysian durians are expected to sell like hot cakes compared with the ones from Thailand due to its tasty flesh.

The above sentence is taken from a news item in a popular national English daily.

The possessive pronoun 'its' refers to the durians and can stand for Malaysian or Thailand ones though syntax favours the former. Here lies the ambiguity apart from the incongruent matching of a plural noun with a singular pronoun.

Besides, the above use of 'due to' (regarded as an adjective phrase) is stated to be incorrect in the older editions of Oxford Concise Dictionary.

The sentence in question can be recast into a more appropriate one as "Malaysian durians are expected to sell like hot cakes compared with those from Thailand owing to the former's tasty flesh.