AU: New mangoes getting closer to commercialisation

For years now, Australian consumers have been told to get ready for new varieties of mangoes which taste better, yield better, look better and have a longer shelf-life. But since their 'soft-launch' in 2009 the new varieties have remained behind the fences of research stations in northern Australia.

Director of Plant Industries for the Northern Territory Government, Bob Williams, says the national mango breeding program, is about to reach an important and long awaited milestone.

A nursery in Queensland has been selected to propagate the three new varieties, with another nursery in Western Australia to be given its approval, by the end of the year.

"The plan is to put these plants out into the six major production areas of Australia, being Kununurra (WA), Katherine (NT), Darwin (NT), Mareeba (QLD), the Burdekin (QLD) and south-east Queensland. We're hoping to have some [mango] plants to the selected growers by the end of this year," he said.

"We don't want growers to get 10 or 15 plants, we need a substantial amount of trees on each farm, anything up to 200 per variety. They need to take all three of the new varieties. We need to have the volumes so we can put fruit through the supply chain and get some hard-data on market acceptance."

The growers will be selected from those who originally submitted an interest to the Australian Mango Industry Association (AMIA).

Mr Williams says the time it's taken to get these new varieties to the market has been 'really unfortunate'.

"The first commercialisation [tender] went out in 2001, so we're 13 years down the track and we still haven't got trees out into production areas. From our perspective it's very disheartening and certainly the industry has been crying out for it as well. This is why we've [the National Mango Breeding Program partners] made the decision to release trees for trials while the commercialisation process runs parallel to it.

"And by the time these trees get to harvest we hope the commercialisation agreement will be signed and we'll be handing it over to AMIA to look after."

Source: abc.net.au