From Hawai'i Tropical Fruit Growers
by Ken Love
About the Twelve
Fruits With Potential Value-Added and Culinary Uses Project
Development of a Sustainable Polyculture Production and Marketing
System for Exotic Tropical Fruits
The 12 Trees Project is funded by the Western Sustainable
Agriculture Research and Education (WSARE) USDA-CSREES competitive
grants program. Fifty-four Hawaii Island chefs, fruit buyers and
growers were invited to select the types of fruit they would like to
see commercially available, based on their desire to utilize the fruit
in culinary applications. In selecting the final 12 fruits,
considerations were given to seasonality and harvest times so that the
availability of harvested fruit and on-farm labor needs were spread out
over the year.
Fruit trees were planted and brought into
production at a demonstration orchard at the Kona Pacific Farmers
Cooperative on Napoopoo Road in the South Kona District. During the
course of the three-year project, fruit from this orchard, as well as
additional fruit purchased from area farmers, were donated to the West
Hawaii Community College culinary school.
Culinary student chefs
developed recipes to be published on the project web site and in a book in the final year
of the project. Members of the cooperative as well as members of the
Hawaii Tropical Fruit Growers - West Hawaii association and any other
interested growers were encouraged to plant these trees. The goals of
this project were to increase profitable agricultural diversification
and to develop a consistently high quality, year-around supply of
tropical fruit for local markets.
Review of
Chosen Fruit
What follows is a random collection of thoughts concerning the
individual fruits chosen for the 12 Trees project These thoughts
include horticultural and personal observations, marketing annotations
and a few thoughts on the potential or lack there of in culinary
circles. I’ve also included my thoughts on alternatives to the 12 fruit
which I find have greater potential for enjoyment as well as
profitability than the original 12 choices.
Although the project
has ended, the Hawaii Community College, West Hawaii Culinary School
has continued directing students to use the 12 Trees Project fruit as
part of their curriculum. Students who graduated after the first year
of the project have continued to use the fruit once they started their
professional careers. After exposure to the 12 chosen fruit, they have
developed an increased interest in many other unusual fruit grown in
the Kona district.
At the beginning of the project, I didn’t
agree with many of the choices that the 54 Big Island Chefs made and
more than 3 years later, tend to feel the same way. I have also altered
my opinions on a few of the fruit based both on horticultural and
marketing experiences.
Cherimoya
Certainly a
delicious fruit, I’m quite sure it has value as a commercial crop with
some aggressive marketing. The tree does not like lower elevations
where it will seldom fruit. It does flower and even with hand
pollination, the fruit is small, hard and often suffers damage from
borers – if it fruits at all. Older trees at the project site which had
fruited at the 1800-foot elevation on my farm in Opihihale South Kona,
have never fruited since being moved to the project at 430-foot
elevation. Over 3 years after transplanting, they have grown fine with
copious foliage growth and flowers. They have never set fruit even with
hand pollination.
At the beginning of the project I would have
said that cherimoya is the best tasting of the annona family of fruit.
Today I would vote for rollinia. I suspect once we have enough
production and chefs get a taste of the fruit, it might move cherimoya
to the back seat.
Atemoya although it has fairly consistent
production with a few commercial farms in the state, never really
delights people the way cherimoya or rollinia does. The advantage of
atemoya is that it will produce well at most elevations. It is a cross
between cherimoya (Annona cherimola) and sugar apple (Annona squamosa).
The sugar apple, which is also called sweetsop, is very popular in
Florida and the Caribbean. It is seldom found in Hawaii. Although there
are a few producing trees, the number of fruit on a tree is far less
than the same size or age of a cherimoya tree. The sugar apple is often
asked for at farmers markets, by visitors and local Filipinos who are
always on the quest for atis, one of the favorite fruits of the
Philippines. At sometime in the future, it would be beneficial for
someone to plant a wide range of the sugar apple cultivars in hopes of
finding one that will be more accepting of Hawaii’s microclimates. As
for me, I’ll stick with rollinia, (Rollinia mucosa and Rollinia
deliciosa). There are a number of advantages over the other annonas. It
does well at most elevations, I’ve seen it produced from 300 feet to
2400 feet. With irrigation or enough rain, it produces more and
consistent fruit than cherimoya. The fruit tastes like a caramel and
light lemon flavored cherimoya. The only fault it seems to have is the
fruit size is from very small to very large. There seems to be little
consistency in that area, which is the same with most annonas. Still,
the smaller fruit has the same texture and taste as the very large
fruit. Something I don’t find with cherimoya, which can be overly sweet
and gritty in some sizes and smooth as custard in others’. The fruit
although its been untested by chefs as well as most growers can be used
in any dishes that chefs currently use cherimoya or atemoya for Crème
Brulee and ice cream or sorbet would have an extra complexity from the
rollinia that could be highly desirable.
The profitability of
all of these fruit can be considerable if a grower develops good
relationships with chefs and stores. We’ve had no problem to sell any
number of annonas both wholesale and at retail farmers markets. In my
experience of marketing fruit in Hawaii, I’ve only seen rollinia sold
at a 2 grocery stores and at perhaps half dozen farmers markets. I’ve
never seen chefs experiment with it and quite frankly; I tend to eat or
sell the ones I grow rather than send samples to chefs. I do pot the
seeds and plan to increase my production as well as consumption. Savvy
growers will plant rollinia instead of cherimoya and plan to market it
aggressively.
Fig
One of my earliest
childhood memories was enjoying a wheel of dried figs from Greece. I
was amazed at the taste and texture of something that to my 5-year-old
mind was also to be played with. It wasn’t until I was much older that
I understand the difference in fresh and dried figs and I still enjoy
working with both. The USDA germplasam depository in Davis Calif. has
139 types of figs in their collection, only a handful of which are
growing in Hawaii. This presents us with many opportunities for
growers, chefs and those who develop value added products. Some of the
figs taste very different from others. Figs were by far the most
profitable of the 12 Trees Project fruit, sometimes at 10 times the
value of Kona coffee growing in the same amount of space. This is with
much less labor. The fig tree at the project started as a foot long
cutting from my Brown Turkey tree in South Kona. Within a year it
produced its first fruit. Within 7 years it produced over 4000 fruit in
1 year, in part, due to aggressive pruning and shaping. Since figs
produce only on new growth, its always advisable to prune to keep the
tree short and let it grow outward rather than upward. If you turn your
back on it for more than a month you’ll wind up with 25 foot shoots
that head straight up. The trees lend themselves to espalier as well as
being weighted down or tied to stakes, which is the common method in
Japan.
Figs lend themselves to a virtually unlimited number of
culinary delights and value added products. A quick study at any
international food show such as Food Ex in Tokyo each March will reveal
hundreds of fig products from Portugal, Turkey, Greece, Japan, Iran and
Iraq. A small dried whole fig from Iran is popular in Japan used in
baked breads and other confections. A few products we produce with
seconds and culls include fig macadamia nut spread and dried fig pieces
in locally produced honey. These sell out quickly at farmers markets in
Kona.
There is always the question of what would happen when
there are hundreds of acres producing the amount of figs that our test
tree produced. The 4000 plus figs were sold to 4 restaurants with an
average 3-month waiting list. There were two times during the year
where we had an excess of figs, some of which were sold to small
restaurants. We requests from chefs to be able to add figs to the menu
and from restaurants on other islands, I’m convinced that we have a way
to go before the market would be saturated at which time the need to
focus on value added products would become apparent.
Many
growers in the area who have figs wondered how they could better rid
themselves of birds who often peck at the ripe figs. We found that
silver or gold Mylar tape, Christmas garland or tinsel, pie plates,
aluminum foil or any reflective material hung in the tree served as an
effect deterrent for up to 3 months. At that time the birds came back.
When we added or moved the reflective material the birds disappeared
again. We found this necessary, on average, every 3 months. Old CD ROMs
hung from string on the trees were very effective. In the future I hope
to conduct tests using ultrasound deterrents. If I had an extra acre
now, I would screen the whole place in and plant figs.
Grumichama
This is one of
the most delightful fruits I’ve run across. It’s more labor intensive
to harvest and package than some of the others but it has great
potential. With a taste that reminds people of black cherry and Concord
grape or jaboticaba, it is usually enjoyed fresh off the tree. One of
the problems is in fighting the birds that also love the fruit.
Fortunately older trees are very prolific and there is usually enough
to go around. Using Mylar tap and metallic reflective materials is
effective but not as much so as with figs.
The fruit is largely
untested by the majority of chefs around the state. The few who we have
been able to supply with samples are anxious to get more both to use as
fresh fruit on buffet lines and in dessert confections. The shelf life
is rather short and post harvest care is essential with grumichama if
it is going to be marketed as a fresh fruit. Single layer clamshell
packs containing fruit with the stem on was the most desirable form of
presentation at a grocery store in Kona and for delivery to chefs.
Picking
the fruit with the stem on is somewhat cumbersome but helps to increase
the shelf life of the fruit. If I’m picking the fruit with the
intention of processing it into a puree, I tend to keep the stems off.
Frozen puree can last more than a year. Removing the 1 to 3 seeds needs
to be done by hand as none of the processors or juicers were effective
as the soft seed would be damaged and the puree would contain too much
grit or seed material. This could be strained but was more time
consuming than removing the seeds by hand. We would sit down to watch a
DVD for 2 hours and process enough fruit to produce 10 cups of puree.
We
produced jelly, syrup and various sauces with the grumichama, all of
which tested well and sold out at farmers markets. I’m looking forward
to working with this fruit and experimenting with ice cream and fudge
recipes.
Kumquat
This seems to be a
largely misunderstood fruit with new chefs on the island. I believe
this is due to the common confusion between calamonsie, or calamondin,
fruit with the kumquat.
The calamonsie is a lime often grown by
the states Filipino farmers. It is round and about the same quarter
sized diameter as the Meiwa kumquat. Chefs are more familiar with the
Nagami or elongated kumquat commonly grown in California. Where as the
skin and pulp of the calamonsie is very sour, the kumquats have a much
sweeter skin and taste. There are over 100,000 kumquat recipes listed
on Internet so the fruit is obviously well known in most areas. Many of
these recipes are considered classics. I feel this fruit was chosen by
chefs because of these classic recipes as well as the culinary
versatility of the fruit. When I had extra fruit I would bring it to
the local Chinese restaurant where they would use it with a variety of
dishes. We also processed the fruit and made marmalade, jelly, and
bottled whole fruit in a light syrup to preserve it. In Japan it is
commonly used to flavor the distilled alcohol, shochu or processed into
a brandy like liquor. In Taiwan, it is dried and candied.
Highly versatile, the kumquat has a bright future for chefs in Hawaii.
Loquat
One of my favorite fruits, the loquat history is as interesting and complex as its flavor.
Having
spent at least a month out of each year for more almost 10 years
studying this fruit in Japan, I’m convinced that it’s potential in the
US as a fresh fruit or for culinary use and in value added products is
virtually unlimited. At the Biwa (Japanese for loquat) Club in Southern
Chiba Japan, about 4 hours from Tokyo, there are more than 2000 items
for sale made with the fruit or reflecting the image of loquat. Many
streets in Tokyo have loquat trees planted as part of the landscaping,
some of these from the late 1940’s.
Arguably one of the most
popular fruits in the world, there is a name for loquat in many
languages except English although the fruit is sometimes called
Japanese medlar. The fruit is mentioned in Chinese and Japanese
historical documents dating back 5000 years. Europeans first exposure
to the fruit was in the late 1600s. Spain is currently the top
producing country. There is continuing research throughout the
Mediterranean region as well as all over Asia.
It is thought
that early Chinese immigrants first brought the fruit to Hawaii,
perhaps even before Captain Cooks time. The fruit and trees were
described by early visitors to Maui. Many of Hawaii’s residents who
have limited knowledge of the fruit do not find it that exciting, often
complaining that’s very small, sour and has large seeds. This happens
because most of he trees are seedlings, which have become invasive in
parts of the state. These trees can be thinned, top worked and grafted
with newer varieties developed in Japan.
To get fruit that that
is really a taste treat and desired by chefs, a fair amount of labor is
required. Once you’ve tried a “perfect” loquat, there is no turning
back! Ideally the fruit should be orange colored, very sweet and
approach tennis ball size weighing more than 3 ounces. In Japan fruit
sold in the spring is sized with 12 of the largest fruit going for as
much as $50.00! Hawaii can produce loquat at different times of the
year than any other location where it’s grown. We could produce the
fruit for New Year celebrations, which in past years, the Japanese
Loquat Cooperative has expressed an interest in.
In Hawaii the
fruit must be grown inside bags to protect it from fruit flies, birds
and from sunburn. This, only after both the flowers and fruit has been
thinned which helps in producing larger sized fruit. Higher elevations
are better for the larger sized fruit but it will produce in lower
areas. If we had enough production of loquat in November and December,
I feel that opening the Japanese market would not be a problem. Getting
the support of the Japanese would not be as much of a problem given we
follow their growing guidelines and stick to the varieties of loquat
they like. Getting the USDA agencies to approve it could be a setback.
The
thousands of loquat products in Japan, Taiwan, China, Spain, Algeria,
Israel and other producing countries have never been mimicked here.
Value added products are another option for growers in Hawaii.
Mysore
Raspberry
Without a
doubt, the most controversial fruit on the list. The Mysore was the #1
choice of the 54 chefs although it could have been any locally grown
raspberry. It is also on the state noxious weed list for all islands
except the Big Island, meaning that it is illegal to plant outside of
the Big Island. Here, it is on a number of invasive lists. I would not
recommend growing it but not for the reason of potential invasiveness.
I feel the plant is highly misunderstood and should be separated from
other rubus plants. It does not send up shoots from the roots like
thimbleberry or other raspberries. Birds seldom spread it, and the
seeds are hard to germinate. In more than 15 years in South Kona, I
could only get a second plant by rooting the tips of the long canes.
The problem comes from the fishhook type thorns, which can make it
extremely painful to harvest. It’s a lot of work for little or no
profit. The fruit tastes very good, chefs like it, and it is nice to
have a fresh raspberry growing in a tropical location, but this plant
is a pain to harvest. I would hope that in the future a thornless
strain could be developed.
Poha
This is a delightful
fruit that is also a lot of work. I might not have chosen it if it were
not for its history as part of Hawaiian Regional Cuisine. The poha is
always in demand by chefs and has not achieved its rightful place among
the states more popular fruit. This due to the nature of the plant and
the time it takes to harvest and husk enough quantity to make a
difference. I do think that a dedicated poha farmer could find other
growing systems that would facilitate ease of harvest and cut into the
labor intensiveness of preparing fruit for sale. What surprised me
during the course of the project were the time trials for harvesting
and husking the fruit. Even at $7.00 a pound, poha was not profitable.
It routinely sells for $2.50 to $3.50 in local markets. I buy it all
and can easily resell it at $7.00. Best on the cost of production with
$12.00 per hour labor and benefits, the cost to produce the $7.00 of
poha was more than $9.00. It’s very time consuming. We tried a number
of different growing systems: trellises, raised beds, fences and a
volunteer plant. There was no discernable difference in the amount of
time to harvest and husk fruit from any of these systems although the
experience does give me a number of ideas to try in the future to save
harvest time.
Chefs enjoy working with the fruit and creating a
number of different dishes. The fruit could be considered an identifier
in much Hawaiian Regional Cuisine. While larger jelly makers on Oahu
and Kauai will call when looking for 3000 to 5000 pounds, I have a
tough time getting 50 pounds for a big Island restaurant. Although
considered invasive, there is just not enough of the fruit to go
around. Then again, if the price paid was in keeping with the time
involved, maybe there would be.
Pomegranate
When the project
started, I would often say that I would have never chosen pomegranate
for this project! Don’t get me wrong, I love them but there are so many
coming in from Calif. and so many products from a number of producing
regions that we have kind of a glut of pomegranate thanks to all the
publicity and network marketed items that are now in the marketplace.
Still, the chefs wanted locally grown fruit. Since it was a known fruit
for many chefs, and they had experience working with it, they wanted
fresh. What I learned since the start of the project was that the USDA
Germplasam Repository in Davis, Ca., has 189 types of pomegranate in
their collection. This opens many possibilities for growers here who
wish to work with the plant. The fruit sells well at farmers markets
with most people saying they just eat it fresh. A few people mentioned
that they make juice from it. One of the advantages in growing it here
is that the plant does well in dry lower elevations. The famous
botanist David Fairchild first sent pants to the US in the late 1800s
from the desert around Baghdad.
If I was going to plant
pomegranate now, I would look into many of the more unusual varieties
available through the USDA Germplasam Repository and plant known
varieties rather than air layers made from seedlings here.
Rangpur
“Kona” Lime
My
first exposure to what I now call the Kona Lime happened many years
ago, while standing in front of the then Kona Farmers Coop office. The
inviting looking orange fruit seemed like a tangerine, peeled like one
and even had the little white strings often found.
I tease people
who try it now that it is what made my hair fall out. Originally
brought here as a rootstock for sweet citrus, the grafts died off and
people often forgot about the trees with the “sour orange”.
Some chefs found the fruit in the 1980s and started using it for
confections and in lime pies. A slice of lime is often found in ice tea
or drinks at Kona’s older restaurants. Student chefs at the
culinary school involved with the project found it useful as a base in
sauce, for juices and in desserts. Many of our newer farmers have not
realized that they have this lime and just think of it as a sour
orange. Once they find out that it is a lime, it seems to open a world
of possibilities both for recipes and marketing of the fresh fruit.
The
only drawback with the fruit are the numerous long and very sharp
thorns on the trees’. Some trees have little or no thorns and
they should be the ones that are propagated. Seedling trees often
produce fruit within a few years but the thorns sometimes make
harvesting difficult and, because of the thorns, often painful. The
marmalade we make from this fruit is some of the best I’ve had
anywhere.
Surinam Cherry
The acquired
taste of this fruit makes it a hard sell at many of the farmers markets
but those who love it, swear by it. A test underway at the Kainaliu
experiment station will help to determine a number of select black
varieties of the usually red fruit. The black Surinam cherries are
sweeter and less resinous than the common red varieties. This is one of
those fruits that although on the invasive list, I cant get enough of.
As with poha, the large jelly manufactures are looking for 3000 to 5000
pounds at a time. Without a processing facility, it’s impossible to
gather enough fruit to fulfill their needs. Chefs and student chefs
have been very creative with the fruit. The red curry base made with
its juice is very good. Fruit flies and birds are a major deterrent to
harvesting fruit in the wild. A number of researchers feel this fruit
has great potential as a cash crop for Hawaii. I tend to agree but it
can be labor intensive and, as the fruit is fragile, it requires
special care in post harvest handling.
Tree Tomato /
Tamarillo
Another
fruit with great potential, the tree tomato is rapidly becoming a
favorite of many chefs. Their fondness for tamarillo comes from the
fruits adaptability to be used both as savory and meat sauces as well
as sweetened for a dessert sauce. When I first started producing the
fruit I simply peeled it and cut it into salads, finding the taste much
better than common tomatoes. Now I make sauces and reductions for use
with scallops, vegetables or in other dishes. Simple jams and ketchup
made from the fruit are delicious. There is some confusion with the use
of both names. New Zealand named the fruit tamarillo, which has caught
on in many locations as they are large producers and fruit from that
country is often found at local stores as well as in mainland markets.
The fruit has been grown locally for many years and known as tree
tomato. If we increase production and local sales, it might be good to
devise a Hawaiian name in order to better promote and market the fruit
and recipes developed at resort hotels using it. Although not near as
profitable as figs, the fruit does have great potential, both
economically and for the chef’s to be creative and develop a
competitive edge.
Tropical
Apricot
As one of
the first growers of this fruit, I’ve always had a fondness for it in
sauces and as a juice. Considered to sour or most, I found it
refreshing and extremely versatile for uses in sauces and jellies. I
still enjoy the fruit but after working with the father of this natural
occurring hybrid, kitembilla, (also called Ceylon Gooseberry), I find
that I’ve developed a fondness for this as well, perhaps even more so
than tropical apricot. I feel the Dovyalis fruit which include a number
of cultivars have great potential. Generally sour tasting and with
nasty thorns, the fruit tends to hybridize when different seedlings are
planted in proximity to each other. Trees of both fruit at the project
site produce fruit with different characteristics than their parent
trees. I feel with a significant amount of selection work, sweeter,
thornless types would evolve making it much more desirable as a fresh
fruit. Not withstanding, the chefs very much desire the tropical
apricot and we have no problem selling all that we can produce. This
seldom leaves us enough for jam making. Chefs at the resorts enjoy
working with this highly versatile fruit for sauces and gels. They
often request it for culinary events. I also feel this fruit as well as
kitembilla could be given local names.
Recommendation:
What I feel
is needed most in Kona is a processing facility for fruit which would
include a community kitchen or a private company that purchases fruit
and produces frozen purees and products made from 100% locally grown
fruit. Currently many of the resort hotels buy frozen guava, lilikoi
and mango puree from the Montreal office of a French company! Hotel
chefs here often request frozen puree, which, we cannot produce in
quantity at local facilities and with the limited labor available. We
also receive a number of requests each month from mainland chefs. I
would urge county and state government in conjunction with the
university to make this happen.
Summary
There are many other
fruit that deserve equal attention to those of the 12 Trees Project.
Over the course of this project we have been able to discuss in more
detail the hundreds of fruit and thousands of varieties with many
growers and chefs. The difference in varieties is something that is
just beginning to make inroads with the chefs here. With 200 types of
avocados, 200 types of mangos and more than 50 types of bananas, there
are many avenues for chefs to take their creativity. There is not a
sufficient quantity of many of these fruit types to promote them across
the board but growers who have the unusual varieties can market them as
a limited high value crop. With some of the rare Hawaiian bananas,
we’ve found that being able to give chefs and grocery stores the fruit
history in the form of a sign they can post for their guests and
customers. This greatly helps to increase the value. In short, once
growers are educated as to what they have, they in turn can educate
their customers who in turn pass the information on to their customers.
We’ve seen the value of some rare bananas increase 300% in the past 2
years.
Other fruit that I hope we can work with in the near
future include jaboticaba, rollinia, acerola and white sapote.
Developing value added products from bilimbi, small starfruit and
soursop would also benefit a number of area growers. Jackfruit and
breadfruit are others that deserve special attention from researchers.
Much
needs to be done to dispel many myths regarding local fruit. Growers
often perpetuate these myths but more so by the stores who often resist
selling some types of fruit like pummelo and breadfruit. Many of the
buyers who have been in the produce business for 30 or more years still
operate on 30-year old demographics. To them, every home already has a
breadfruit tree or pummelo tree. It took some time to convince one of
the local markets to sell “ugly” local lemons, (jambhiri) but once they
decided to take a chance they found that the lemons sell very well. I’m
sure this would be true of many other fruit given shelf space in the
already squeezed produce section.
With the ever increasing
numbers of new farmers, those moving to the Kona district who have
little or no experience in tropical agriculture, an opportunity exists
in the form of new interest in the more unusual crops grown, this in
terms of using and marketing. For example strawberry guava, which is
considered highly invasive and can easily be found in the wild, sells
well when packaged and put into the market at $2.50 a pound. An
informal query of some of the buyers revealed that they have the plant
on their land but did not know what it was or that it was edible. This
was true for Surinam Cherry and a few other fruit I tested.
I also
found that many of the new farmers had little knowledge of the
differences between other types of fruit that were commonly confused,
like passion fruit and guava. Some new farmers feared fruit that
appeared to grow in unusual formations like jaboticaba and wi apple.
All of this experience tells me there is a need for continuing
education regarding tropical fruit. Horticulture, post-harvest,
marketing and the assistance in developing value added products will
contribute to the overall rural economic development and sustainability
of small farms found across the state. When agtourism is added to the
equation, a grower soon finds that priorities tend to change in the
direction of profitability. A number of new farmers in South Kona now
plant newly cleared land with agtourism in mind rather than production
crops. This greater diversity will lead to greater profits and again,
sustainability.
Back
to
Cherimoya
Fig
Grumichama
Kumquat
Loquat
Mysore raspberry
Poha (Cape gooseberry)
Pomegranate
Rangpur (“Kona”) lime
Surinam
Cherry
Tree
tomato (tamarillo)
Tropical Apricot
|
|