Native Fruit Tree Improvement in Amazonia: An Overview - Indigenous Fruit Trees in the Tropics: Domestication, Utilization and Commercialization - page 102

Table 6.1. Comparison of the mean chemical compositions (g/100 g) a and energy values
(kcal) of contrasting native Amazonian fruit groups. The mesocarp is generally the most
important part of the palm, starchy/oily and juicy fruit groups (Clement, 2006).

Group ( n species) Water Protein Fats Carbohydrates Fibre Energy

Nuts and seeds (8) 3.9 14.1 57.4 18.1 4.8 62.1

Palm fruits (8) 45.3 3.5 21.8 16.0 12.2 31.0

Starchy/oily fruits (8) 51.1 2.5 8.3 32.4 9.0 23.1

Juicy fruits (21) 82.8 0.9 0.8 11.9 2.9 6.3

a Fresh weights; the difference between the sum of these means and 100 is due to ash content.

national agricultural research services. The primary objective has generally
been to get fruit into national and international markets, rather than using it as
an additional item in food security. Unfortunately, this objective has not been
achieved very often. In part, this may have been because most fruits in
Amazonia, especially the native fruits, are produced by family farmers, whereas
the clients for R&D have been considered to be commercial farmers and
agroindustry.
Additionally, international fruit markets are highly competitive and any new
fruit takes market share from existing fruits because overall growth of the
international fruit market is small. According to Alonso González (CIAT, 2006,
personal communication) growth is currently 3% per year. However, economic
growth currently averages 4-5%. Hence, new fruits must have high quality,
uniformity and good price, which are difficult objectives to attain quickly,
especially for family farmers. Because of globalization, national urban
supermarkets follow international markets in their demands for quality,
uniformity and price. The result is that rural Amazonian fruit producers compete
with fruits of international standard, both imported and nationally produced,
while at the same time suffering from developing-world limitations (Clement,
1997; Smith et al ., 1998). In Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil, for example, apples
from Argentina and Rio Grande de Sul, Brazil, are cheaper and more uniform in
quality than locally produced native fruits. Consequently (and, possibly, because
of local preferences), demand in supermarkets is higher for the imported fruits.
The need for improvement of native species, whether already
domesticated or still wild, is clear when the objectives are the regional, national
or international markets. Is the same true for species used exclusively for food
security? We argue that it is, as any family farmer will market excess yields
when possible, and the better the quality of fruit sent to market the more likely
the family will be to receive a good price. Sale of farm produce also contributes
to food security, as a considerable number of off-farm products are now part of
most people's diets even when the family is far from an urban centre.
In this chapter, we list some of the current native fruit improvement activities
in Amazonia, examine two cases that contrast conventional and participatory
approaches, and consider the challenges for the next decade. We concentrate
on Brazilian and Peruvian Amazonia, which constitute most of the Basin and
have the greatest concentration of research and development activity.