New Guinea’S New Passionfruit Industry

Native-Grown Pulp Comes Out By Plane and Freezer

Review of A New Industry, by JUDY TUDOR

LAE, April 25.

THE pilot passionfruit pulping . plant, which began operations in a small building on the out irts of Goroka, New Guinea istern Highlands, last January, in e first four or five months of its istence has produced between 50tons of passionfruit pulp.

None of this is from the six acres passionfruit planted by Mr.

Jorge Greathead, or from the ,000 passionfruit plants which he s distributed to the local natives , behalf of Messrs. Cottee, the istralian fruit juice manufac rers who are sponsoring the in stry in the Highlands. All the Ip so far produced has come from [f-grown vines, progeny of the ssionfruit introduced into the ghlands about 20 years ago by, it thought, Mr. James Taylor, rhe new, organised plantings are o progeny of the original local ssionfruit because, so far, they ve been —with the exception of own Spot—almost disease-free, own Spot is being attacked by jular sprayings with Bordeaux. ?he local natives —who have taken thusiastically t o passionfruit ture —are advised by an ex ision officer of the Department of riculture; and Mr. Greathead 0 has an occasional field-day on 1 property to show the local itry how passionfruit should be rwn. i?he vines in the Greathead six ■es have been pruned back to 0 branches about six or eight t long and are now being trained ng the newly-installed posts and •es. The first fruit is reaching -turity and it is of tremendous 3 and excellent quality and /our. Fruit from the self-sown es is also large—at least equal A grade passionfruit grown in stralia.

HE economics of the Highlands passionfruit industry are by no means certain as yet, but for 1 present the natives are paid i penny per pound for their fruit t averages about 10 fruit to the md —and this appears to make it isible for the company to pulp i fruit at Goroka, put it in cans h preservative, air-freight it is coast, put it in the freezer there, d it as ships’ freezer cargo to stralia —all at a cost not too muph of gear with Australian-grown i processed pulp. )n the face of it, the business of ting passionfruit from the remote ■ Highlands, when it grows per tly well right in Australia, may m screwy. But Cottees have

never been able to get sufficient pulp for their requirements in the Commonwealth; they already have made an abortive attempt to get it from Norfolk Island, where the vines also grow wild in the hedge rows but where the residents could not care less about collecting it; and, of recent years, they have grown a considerable quantity in South Africa for their Australian requirements.

been fetching a high price in the open market and growers presum ably P refer to dispose of their crop in that fashion rather than sell on bulk contract to the processors.

It is likely that when the pro moters are better able to assess the £SD of the new enterprise, the price to the Highlanders will be in creased. It is acknowledged that the

*ice now paid them is a bedrock xe—for the simple reason that hile it is in order to put the buy ng price up, these primitive people Duld not understand the economics ;hind it if the initial price were gh and later had to be dropped.

THERE is no doubt that the . Highlands will grow excellent passionfruit. The unknown ctors at present are the yield of iltivated passionfruit per acre, lether they will bear continuously seasonally, and whether the dives will maintain their interest the industry.

In regard to the last X-factor; e local natives, although they live the most primitive fashion taginable, appear to have taken the European money economy th their ears right back. They ve no small opinion of the worth their hire, or the worth of the lits of their toil —in the vegetable ie or any other. With them, right •w, the passionfruit industry is pular. It is conceivable, however, at their present desire for hard sh is just a passing phase; and lere the new industry would be, Bn, is anyone’s guess. But, having w learned the joys of trade-store )d, maybe even the Highlanders 11 be reluctant to go back to their iditional diet of almost un ieved sweet-potato.

IT is unlikely that the industry will ever seriously interest Euro pean growers because of the dif ficulty of getting posts, and the cost of the wire on which the vines run.

One has to see Goroka to get the full meaning of this. The timber begins about 2,000 feet higher up, and a considerable number of miles from the township.

Within the area where the best agricultural land lies, there virtu ally is nothing in the nature of wood, or timber that can be used for firewood —much less fencing or passionfruit posts. The absence of firewood is the bane of local house wives’ existence. They make plans for “buying a dead tree off the kanakas”; and, in the meantime, make do with a couple of packing cases, or even semi-dry pieces of the weedy shrub they grow as coffee shade-trees.

These large areas of grass-land

must once have carried a natural timber growth, which has been re moved over the ages by a deliberate policy of de-forestation. Before the Europeans came, these grasslands were the traditional fighting grounds; the villages were far up the mountains, on the timber line.

Since European settlement began in earnest—say District Services per sonnel —the tendency has been for these natives to come back to the grasslands to live; and their claim to their tribal portions of the fight ing-lands, they, of course, have never relinquished.

NATIVE passionfruit growers get over the difficulty of posts and wire by weaving trellis of bam boo or pit-pit, and even in some cases have planted the vines under their groves of casuarina trees, and let them spread into the trees.

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The present Cottee pulping piam consists of a small machine, about eight or nine feet high, made of a stainless metal. It is driven by a petrol engine, and the fruits are fed in through a hopper at the top.

They are forced in between tw r o moving belts, the pulp squeezed out and the skin ejected. The pulp is then put into four-gallon, square cans like kerosene cans; several ounces of preservative are added; and the cans are sealed with a screw lid. The preservative pre vents fermentation for about five days, during which time the cans should have been flown out to Lae where they are put into the freezer to await the arrival of an Aus tralian-bound ship.