A Darwin horticulturalist says he’s found a way to extend the growing life of niche market tropical fruit crops in the Northern Territory. Garcinian fruits like the achacha and mangosteen grow well in the wet season, but the trees go dormant in the dry season. Horticulturalist Chris Nathanael says in the past that’s prevented farmers from growing these valuable crops on a commercial scale.
“There have been plantations of up to 3,000 [trees] and they have failed,” he said. “Whilst there are successful small plots, the large plantations have failed and that’s because of our dry season weather.”
To combat the problem, Mr Nathanael is grafting better root systems to the trees to help them grow all year round. “With the achacha, we’ve found a root stock to graft onto the tree that tolerates the dry season conditions,” he said. “With the additional rootstock that tolerates our local conditions, we’re able to grow this all year round without setback. “This tree here is only two years old and is probably 50 per cent larger than if it was on its own rootstock.”
Mr Nathanael also hopes the new roots will help to improve the quality of the fruit on the trees. “The change would be in more fruit, in enhancing the flavour of the fruit… and we believe we will get a bigger fruit and a better fruit,” he said. It’s hoped the research could lead to the start up of new tropical fruit industries in the Top End.
Currently, north Queensland is home to Australia’s only large-scale achacha farm, while the region also has a number of mangosteen farms between Townsville and Cairns. Mr Nathanael says a potential Northern Territory garcinian fruit industry wouldn’t pose a threat to those farmers in Queensland.
“Nowhere near enough fruit is coming out of Queensland,” Mr Nathanael said. “There has always been room for new fruits here in Australia and in the Northern Territory. “We’ve got room to improve all that and there’s so much room for mangosteens, it’s unreal.
“There’s big money in mangosteens, there’s big money in the imbi and in the achacha and we want our growers to come into that market.” But Mr Nathanael says the vision is still a few years away. “Usually most of these projects take between five and 15 years,” he said. “I believe we will have some good results in a couple of years’ time.”
Source: ABC.net