Native Fruit Tree Improvement in Amazonia: An Overview - Indigenous Fruit Trees in the Tropics: Domestication, Utilization and Commercialization - page 110

(Farronay, 2005). Hence, there is strong demand for the fruit coming from new
plantations and from managed populations. However, it is not yet clear if demand
will expand as supply expands, once all the plantations come into production.
The rapid expansion of the camu-camu project is already benefiting the
farmers who joined the effort early, while those who joined later are expecting
benefits in the near future. Most of the farmers who joined the project have
included camu-camu as an additional component of their diversified traditional
production systems. With current high prices, they are enjoying considerable
additional income. Near Pucallpa, on the Ucayali River, a community
commercialized 25 t of fruit from their plantations and adjacent wild
populations, earning about US$11,500 in the 2005/2006 season.
Most families have also started using the fruit for subsistence, which is quite
probably improving family health. Many families have started to process fruit
for local consumption and markets; in general, home processing is done by the
women and older girls, who also benefit directly from sales. The men and
women will often take fruit and fruit products to market in alternate weeks, with
the benefits managed by whoever goes to market. One group has used family
contacts to market directly to Lima, the capital, and is receiving between US$1
and US$1.50 per kilogram of pulp, considerably more than if they sold locally.
Although there are health benefits, camu-camu contributes to food security
more via income than as a food.
In terms of long-term conservation of genetic resources, the programme
has enhanced local genetic diversity by introducing germplasm from other
communities. Each farmer now has control over his germplasm and protects it
from loss. Additionally, before the current improvement programme was
designed and implemented, INIA had encouraged plantings with non-selected
seed from numerous natural populations in different river basins (Ucayali,
Tigre, Curaray, Yavari, Putumayo, etc.). This distribution enhanced local
diversity in the project area and provided an ample genetic base for the farmers
to start selecting from.
The Brazilian improvement programme
The INPA group introduced camu-camu in the late 1970s and distributed seed
nationwide, but sufficient commercial interest in the fruit only appeared in the
early 1990s. With this new demand, the INPA group expanded its prospecting
efforts to capture variability throughout the basin, especially along tributaries
rather than the main river (Yuyama, 2001). This is the effort that identified
camu-camu with 6.1 g of ascorbic acid in 100 g of skin-pulp (Yuyama et al. ,
2002). The germplasm collected (150 accessions to date) is planted in
replicated progeny trials or in collections, where phenotypic characterization
and evaluation is executed (Gomes et al ., 2004). As soon as plants fruit, their
proximate and ascorbic acid compositions are analysed. The group has also
worked on vegetative propagation techniques with some success (Pereira and
Yuyama, 2002), but a commercially viable protocol remains to be perfected.
In 2003, a collaborative effort among INPA, Embrapa Genetic Resources
and Biotechnology and the Federal University of Amazonas was funded to