Opportunities for Commercialization and Enterprise Development of Indigenous Fruits in Southern Africa - Indigenous Fruit Trees in the Tropics: Domestication, Utilization and Commercialization - page 257

Forest resource

Collectors/transporters

Rural consumer

Wholesaler

Urban consumer

Retailer

Fig. 14.1. Supply chain combinations observed in southern Africa.

Indigenous fruits are characterized by mass fruiting seasons that typically
last 3 months. This seasonality can lead to excess supply over demand and
hence a drastic fall in prices during the harvesting period. This is aggravated by
lack of market information that results in inefficient distribution of fruit. In
Malawi, a large proportion of Ziziphus mauritiana fruit sold in Lilongwe came
from Mangochi (240 km away) instead of the much closer Salima area (Kaaria,
1998). A similar situation exists for the Limbe market, where fruits came from
Mangochi (150 km away) instead of Chikwawa, which is only 70 km south of
Limbe. Poor linkage of producers with consumers and the market, and the lack
of market information on indigenous fruits have been identified by Schomburg
et al . (2001) as some of the major bottlenecks to the commercial development
of indigenous fruit enterprises. The implication of long-distance transportation
is that mechanical damage to the fruits is increased, thereby reducing their
market value. To address the fluctuations in supply, traders often diversify their
merchandise by selling indigenous fruits in addition to other types of fruits,
including exotic or domesticated tree and non-tree fruits such as Mangifera
indica (mango), Persea americana (avocado), Psidium guajava (guava), Citrus
limon (lemon), Musa spp. (bananas), Vintisfera spp. (grapes) and Ananas spp.
(pineapple).
The most common indigenous or wild fruits that traders sell include U.
kirkiana (masuku), Strychnos cocculoides (tusongole), Strychnos pungens or
innocua (tugome), Parinari curatellifolia (mpundu), Anisophyllea boehmii
(nfungo), Garcinia huillensis (nsongwa), Diospyros mespiliformis (chenja) and
Landolphia kirkii ( mabungo). The fruit that traders trade in the most is U.
kirkiana , followed by M. indica (Karaan et al ., 2005).

14.2.4 Market prices

In many southern African countries, there is no defined or formal mechanism for
the setting of market prices of indigenous fruits (Kaaria, 1998; Ramadhani,
2002). Prices are determined by adding a profit to all costs (purchasing costs,