A New Fruit To Grow?

[somo]

My wife went to a meeting yesterday where aguy was looking for people to grow a new fruit apparently in demand in China. The only info I have is a facebook page with lots of pics. 

 https://th-th.facebook.com/incathailandcompany 

Would appreciate any input.

[iamthai]

It seem like the contract farmimg company, they will sell the nuts/sprout to you for growing. 

After growing 8-12 months you can sell the nut seeds back to the company with garantee price.

[somo]

I got that bit but anyone had experience of it and know what it is called?

From the little I know it is used in some natural medicine popular in China.

Edited June 24, 2014 by somo

[somo]

Tracked it down

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plukenetia_volubilis 

 

Might be an interesting proposition.

[sbf]

Hi Somo,

We have about 1 rai of Plukenetia in the ground. It was planted just after Songklan this year as seedlings and is just starting to grow away now. From memory it is an Amazonian plant and a source of some of the Omega oils which is why it is in demand. Probably too cold in most of China for production so they are looking further south in Asia for their sources

 

Planted 2 m apart in row and 3 m between row.

 

Price offered again from memory 40B hulled and 20B unhulled per kg of seed.

 

It is really too early for me to comment either in an agronomic or an economic sense on this plant.

 

We are on pretty good soil here in the heart of rubber, cassava and maize land. We lost a lot of seedling after delivery from the nursery and after planting, probably around 20% combining the two. They went into well prepared soil with a drip irrigation system.

 

The guy up the road went for around 900 plants for around 3 rai and apparently lost over 400. I would try and obtain seed and raise them myself next time, just to rule out nursery borne infection, which is what I think we suffered.

 

They are a vine so one needs to set up a trellis structure to support them, so they are quite an expensive crop to establish.

 

At the current rate of growth I can't see us getting much crop for another 6-8 months, but time will tell.

 

Will report back

 

[somo]

Hi sbf

That's interesting.

The prices quoted to us were 25 and 45 Baht so similar.

I am not sure who is supposedly guaranteeing those prices as there doesn't seem to be an established company here inThailand just that facebook page.

The guy seemed to be trying just to get comitments from villagers to give it a go and was trying to get 100k rai going nationwide.

It concerns me that if he doesn't get enough produce then there may not be any market at all.

Best of luck with yours and do keep us informed.

 

PS. What did the seedlings cost and also cost of seeds. We may just do a few for ourselves at first as apparently they are quite tasty

 

Edited June 25, 2014 by somo

[sbf]

Hi Somo,

We were introduced to a contract company by the guy up the road I mentioned in my earlier post, who is growing 3 rai of them.

 

The Plukenetia buyers were a Chiang mai based crowd. They came and did a presentation for my family and when my mother-in-law heard B100,000 per rai she wanted to turn all our land over to the crop straight away!!!!. We managed to get her to agree 1 rai as an experiment, and if successful we can expand.

 

The 300 plants cost B1000. I have since found a supplier offering  seed on the web. They were based just north of Ubon, although I have not contacted them yet. Will try propagating them from cuttings once ours are a little bigger. Or wait for the first seed crop and go from there

[sbf]

Hi a bit of an update about this crop. I have met another grower who has a few mature plants as well as a couple of rai of young seedlings just in the ground. He is growing on 2 x 4 m, and I think that this looks to be more sensible than the 2 x 3m we were advised. He has a contract price of 55B per kg hulled, so higher than ours. .

 

Our plants have grown away quite well in the last month or so. No sign of flower yet, but I think that we are only a month or two off on our largest plant which is now about 4-5m in length. As I mentioned above our initial planting was hit by  soil borne disease in the seedling stock sold to us. The company had promised replacements for the plants, and then could not deliver these as they had problems with disease we were told.

 

We have purchased replacement plants from another grower at 30B each and we have filled our gaps. In the end we lost just over 30% of the plants supplied. The new plants have grown away well no losses at all.

 

We now have to erect our pergola to hold the vines up. All the other growers I have seen are using Bamboo and 3=4 strands of wire, one has some cross wires between the row to spread the canopy over a little. I am hesitant to copy this, even though it is obviously low cost. The main reason is these plants should crop for 20-25 years. I am worried that 3-4 years down the line the bamboo will have rotting  off and there will be considerable maintenance issues in keeping the plants up. So we are looking at a few options using concrete posts and metal with our local welder to see if we can come up with something suitable at a reasonable cost.. 

[David48]

Maybe some photos would be great to observe the growing process?

 

I like photos ... 

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