Written by Noel Ramos | 26 January 2012

Over the years, there have been a plethora of outstanding exotic fruit books, starting with the Julia Morton classic Fruits of Warm Climates, Bill Whitman's Five Decades of Tropical Fruits, Harry Lorenzi's Brazilian Fruits and Cultivated Exotics and Bryan Brunner and Juan Rivero's Exotic Fruit Trees of Puerto Rico. Now we may have a new member to add to this group of "must have" books, Specialty Crops for Pacific Islands. Although it does not exclusively cover tropical fruits, the chapters for mangosteen, lychee, breadfruit and bananas offer some of the most comprehensive information you will find anywhere.

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Written by Craig Elevitch | 27 January 2012

By eating a variety of live-cultured or “fermented” foods, you promote diversity among microbial cultures in your body. Biodiversity, increasingly recognized as critical to the survival of larger-scale ecosystems, is just as important at the micro level. Call it microbiodiversity. By fermenting foods and drinks with wild microorganisms present in your home environment, you become more interconnected with the life forces of the world around you. 

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Written by Niki Mazaroli | 26 January 2012

What is a Tropical Homegarden?

A traditional Tropical Homegarden (THG) of the Pacific Islands differs greatly from the raised bed or vegetable patch image commonly associated with temperate home edible gardens. A THG is a small-scale agroforestry land use system based on cultural traditions of subsistence living. A THG is in close proximity to a place of residence and tended to by the household members. Plants are grown for personal consumption as food, as well as for medicinal, ceremonial and construction purposes.

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Written by Andrew Benton, Lex A.J. Thomson, Peter Berg, and Susan Ruskin | 28 December 2011

Bamboo has a range of benefits that make it excellent for developing small-scale productive enterprises. It is widely used throughout the Pacific for temporary building structures, rafts, harvesting poles, fishing rods, food and water containers, food tongs, and handicrafts. Bamboo species are most often harvested from the wild, such as secondary forests in Melanesia. In Hawai‘i, wild bamboo stands are commonly harvested for fishing poles, edible shoots, and some construction applications, as well as for some craft work and kadomatsu. It is little used for food except to small extent by Southeast Asian immigrants. 

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Written by Shree Padre | 28 December 2011

The Mysore raspberry hails from Coorg in Karnataka, India. Dismissed as a thorny wild weed, no one would ever dream of cultivating it there. You would be laughed at if you had the temerity to make such a suggestion. But in picturesque Hawai‘i, the Mysore raspberry earns an income for small farmers and has a loyal fan following.

“It was the number one choice of 54 chefs here,” says Ken Love, president of the Hawaii Tropical Fruit Growers (HTFG) and the moving force behind the 12 Trees Project, an agricultural programme launched in 2005 which has boosted the income of small farmers.

Farmers in Hawai‘i’s Kona region grow one of the most expensive coffees in the world called Kona. It is their main crop but they hardly make any money out of it. Many farmers were abandoning their coffee farms, migrating to cities and selling their fields to developers. The 12 Trees Project sought to reverse this trend. It helped farmers diversify by growing unusual fruits which would find favour with buyers, chefs and consumers.

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