South Africa overtakes Australia in Macadamia Production

It seems that South Africa will overtake Australia as the largest producer this year. Production in Australia has plateaued for the last few seasons and production costs continue to be a factor. The focus on R&D to remain competitive is continuing with varieties a large part of that. The results of the industry wide benchmarking exercise will provide further insights into the causes of the leveling of yields although a lack of investment in a significant hectarage of the industry by producers is seen as a serious/causal factor.

Malawi is likely to come in as 6th largest this year, a drop from 5th in recent years. This does not include smallholder plantings that have yet to enter the export value chain and these will boost production going forward. China is now producing significant nut but is struggling with selecting superior varieties, particularly for an export market. The focus of production is shifting to lower cost countries and hence Malawi and the rest of eastern and southern Africa has a great future if the issues are addressed.

At the Macadamia conference in September, a paper of the development of genetic markers will be presented by Dr Cathy Nock , co authored by me. Unfortunately, I won't be attending.  Although this work was not directly funded by IrishAID or the Malawian industry, we did use material from the dwarfing planting to test the system developed by taking single leaves of open polinated seedlings back to the SCU and testing these for parentage to find the ring ins.  This program supports the selection and breeding program for Malawi at a relatively low cost if funds are available. With further support we hope to be able to pinpoint candidate genes for desired characteristics including dwarfing, drought tolerance and quality paremeters and make a breeding and selection program much more efficient.

By Dr. Wayne Hancock