ICRAF project develops the wild fruit products of the Miombo woodlands

Life at the breakfast table will never be the same again. ‘Can you pass me the Mazhanje jam? Do you want some more Syzygium juice?’ ‘No thanks, I take some Strychnos juice instead with a cracker of Vitex jam.’ These are not the latest food creations resulting from genetic modification, but products made from the fruit of indigenous trees in southern Africa. The World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) is helping farmers to develop a fruit tree market from the Miombo woodlands – a major ecological zone in southern Africa.

The project which is funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), Bundesministerium für wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung (BMZ), Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) supports farmers (mainly women) with the production, processing and marketing of indigenous fruit tree products.

Training women in fruit processing, Tanzania Photo by: Anthony Njenga

“Indigenous fruit is readily available in most of southern Africa’s forests and is usually collected by women and children as an additional food source for the family and to provide cash income”, says Miombo Indigenous Fruit Tree Project Leader Festus Akinnifesi, an ICRAF Tree Scientist based in Malawi.“Women also sell the fruit on the roadside and in local markets to make some extra money. They are very knowledgeable and can often tell the sweetness of the fruit by just looking at its texture.”

Building on this indigenous knowledge ICRAF scientists saw potential to develop the largely informal indigenous fruit markets in southern Africa and to domesticate the species being used – turning them into real cash crops. A recent international research report estimates the annual global market for natural products at US$45 billion with the African market remaining largely untapped. Moreover, indigenous fruit trees serve as ‘food safety nets’ because they produce fruit during the hungry period when there is a shortage of food between maize crops. They become even more important when such annual crops fail.

From the start of the Project in the late 1990s the ICRAF team focused on three areas: securing fruit supply by domesticating indigenous fruit trees, processing fruit, and expanding market opportunities for indigenous fruit tree products. Akinnifesi says, “We had to start from scratch: the only indigenous fruit available was collected in the forest and there was virtually no market for it, or knowledge of how to add value to the crop.”

God’s indigenous fruit trees

The first step was to find out if indigenous fruit trees could be cultivated. This begun with ethno-botanical surveys, explains Akinnifesi.“One of the main challenges we faced was the belief of local people that all trees are planted by God and therefore none of the farmers was used to planting them, or even believed that this was possible. We had to foster a tree-planting culture in the villages to make cultivation of indigenous fruit trees possible. Most villagers were also not aware of the difference between female and male trees. For example, males of Uapaca kirkiana do not produce fruits, and for that reason most farmers would cut them down as ‘barren’ or ‘bewitched’ trees. As a result, female trees did not get pollinated and would bear little or no fruit, leading to genetic erosion.”

This meant that there were not enough good quality cultivars, so the team had to go and look for the best indigenous trees in the forests of southern Africa. Farmers and villagers initially helped to select the top 20 different indigenous fruit tree species in Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The most-preferred trees of each species were then selected by farming communities from nearby forests, their farms and communal areas for the fresh fruit and processing markets.

Children played a key role in finding the best selections: as Akinnefesi explains, “They know where to find the trees in the wild and often named trees after themselves. This made us decide to give communities the indirect intellectual property credits for their stewardship of these particular trees. We named the indigenous fruit trees after the villages or farmers that discovered and managed them. A tree found in Nazombe, Malawi, for example, would be called ICR02NazombeMW29. In this case the ICR stands for ICRAF, 02 for 2002, MW for Malawi and 29 for the 29th superior tree identified in the country.”

The most difficult step in the research was to find ways to successfully propagate selected species. There was virtually no research on methods of propagation for these wild plants until ICRAF entered the scene in the mid-1990s. The research team also had to identify what superior indigenous fruit trees should look like. This resulted in a long list including an ability to fruit early, and to produce fruit that were bigger than average and very sweet. The World Agroforestry Centre established orchards in Malawi on research stations and farms to find ways of domesticating superior selections of indigenous trees.

They soon found out that improving grafting and marcotting skills (techniques for cloning of selected trees) was the key to scaling-up their adoption. Grafting trainers were recruited to teach grassroots women trainers in each country in southern Africa how to propagate the species and to establish and manage nurseries. Apart from using superior planting material, the timing of grafting also turned out to be of critical importance. As Akinnifesi explains, “We found out that grafting is best done before bud break for these wild species. Grafting between February and June (Autumn in southern Africa) resulted in a 90% failure rate, while if Uapaca kirkiana trees were grafted between October and December the success rate was over 90%.

Jam by the spoonful

Children knew where to find the trees in the wild and often named trees after themselves Photo by: Anthony Njenga

Until recently the indigenous fruit tree market has been mainly informal: women selling fruits on roadsides and in local markets. Once the production of indigenous fruit could be assured by propagating and cultivating superior trees, it was time to find out which markets to target. Market research in Malawi found out that producing fruit concentrates for industry was very promising. Fruit concentrate yields much higher prices on the market than selling the fruit per piece. For that reason the team established women’s fruit-processing groups and trained these groups to produce such products as jam, fruit juice and wine. Initially 198 grassroots women trainers from four communities in Tanzania were trained. They in turn worked with local women’s groups and within 18 months over 2000 women were involved in processing. Within 3 years the diffusion of these innovations has resulted in over 6000 women processors becoming involved. The new indigenous fruit tree products were also a big success in the rural villages: “Women were selling jam by the spoonful on the streets”, Akinnifesi said. “Communities are excited that the luxuries of city dwellers have come to their doorsteps.”

Indigenous fruit tree products Photo by: Anthony Njenga

However, success created new problems, such as storage. Most indigenous fruit trees produce a crop during only a few months in a year. Guaranteeing the quality of the fruit year-round became a challange. Moreover, lack of packaging materials hampered upgrading of the indigenous fruit tree products to city market standards Co-operation with Safire, a Zimbabwebased NGO and a private company, Tulimara (Speciality Products Ltd) provided the solution. Communities are now producing intermediate products like fruit pulp (concentrates) that are further processed and packaged by Tulimara. In addition, Safire acts as a broker by organising and training the women entrepreneurs in processing, hygiene, book-keeping and business skills. Farmers were trained in basic pulping and hygiene, and were given deep freezers in which to store their produce. And Akinnifesi already dreams about the next step: “We envision expanding the market to produce intermediate products for the cosmetics industry like Amarula soap, Parinari oil and Baobab oil. Because that is where the real money is!” Plans are also in progress to develop high-value trees whose products can be used for medicines, oils and cosmetics.

Impact assessments have shown that the developing indigenous fruit tree industry has the potential to improve the livelihood of many farmers. Mrs Jeri of the Jerusalem Community Group in Zambia, for example, earned enough money to build a new house and buy cattle. But apart from providing income, project leader Akinnifesi stresses the importance of this project in empowering women: “Traditionally men tend to hijack the ideas and businesses of successful women but in this case that’s very difficult. The process is too complex. Compare it to cooking: a man can learn how to prepare a meal but even if he has the knowledge, a man is often slower and less skillful than a woman – and would usually prefer to do something else for a living”.

The project has shown that it is not only fruit, but also a large number of other indigenous plant treasures of the Miombo woodlands that are worth preserving. Regional momentum is now building to form a large consortium dealing with the commercialisation of indigenous tree fruit products – to help spread the benefits of Vitex jam and other innovative products to wider communities in southern Africa.