Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
with the survey conducted by Minae
et al.
(1995) in the central region of
Malawi. The two studies in the southern region agreed that the top four fruit
species were
Mangifera indica
(mango),
Persea americana
(avocado),
Citrus
sinensis
(sweet orange) and
Uapaca kirkiana
(wild loquat), in decreasing order
of magnitude
.
The central region study identified
C. sinenses
as first,
M. indica
as second and
Psidium guajava
(guava) as third preference. In general for all
the three studies in Malawi, mango (
M. indica
) is the most preferred, followed
by sweet orange (
C. sinenses
), avocado (
P. americana
), guava (
P. guajava
),
banana (
Musa paradisiaca
), pawpaw (
Carica papaya
), tangerine (
Citrus
reticulata
) and wild loquat (
U
.
kirkiana
). However, in the two studies conducted
in the southern region,
U
.
kirkiana
was ranked in fourth position of all species
and eighth position in the central region, but first among the indigenous fruits.
The non-exotic fruit-tree species that were mentioned in the top ten preference
list were:
U
.
kirkiana
,
Z. mauritiana
,
Casimiroa edulis
(Mexican apple) and
Strychnos cocculoides
. It is interesting that
S. cocculoides
was only ranked in
17th-19th position in the southern region, but in tenth position in the central
region (Table 1.10). This may be due to the fact that
S. cocculoides
is now rare
in the southern region.
Compared to the previous surveys, the results showed that several factors
determine users' preferences for different fruit-tree species, including the
geographical location and availability of fruits.
Assessing priority products to commercialize
As commercialization of fruit production is becoming a high priority for the
development community and farmers, it became necessary to decide which fruits
to help communities to commercialize and which products to help them market.
Workshop participants in Malawi, Tanzania and Zimbabwe set priorities among
products they already knew. At the Zimbabwe workshop each participant was
asked to list at least three products and the products mentioned most often were
selected as top priority. In the Tanzania and Malawi workshops, participants were
first asked to list as many species and product combinations as possible and from
this list they ranked those that they most preferred (Table 1.11).
There was considerable variability among countries. At the Malawi and
Tanzania workshops, participants assessed both indigenous and exotic species,
but while the top four products at the Malawi workshop were exotics (mango
and tomato products), all of the top four in Tanzania were indigenous species.
The large number of exotic fruits included in the priority lists raises the question
about the need to include exotic fruit trees in current domestication
programmes. Exotic fruits such as mango could be used as the driver for a
domestication and commercialization programme, and indigenous fruits could
be introduced as complementary products.
It was noted that marula (
Sclerocarya birrea
) products were strongly
promoted by the more commercially orientated participants of the Harare
workshop. In contrast, marula products received a much lower rating by the
community processing groups who attended the Tanzania and Malawi
workshops.
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