African Wildlife & Environment Issue 81

FAUNA, FLORA & WILDLIFE

Women with bags of fruit awaiting transport (left), sorting ripe from greener fruits and a section through a 'stone' showing the nutty-kernels (previous page)

Horticultural possibilities Some 50 years ago Professor Kas Holtzhausen of Pretoria University is reported to have travelled over a million kilometres in search of the perfect Marula, visiting over 100,000 trees as he searched most of southern Africa for the biggest, sweetest, juiciest Marulas. He then selectively bred these to be able to get bigger and better fruits. One reason being that the peel contains at least 150 flavourant molecules and in the USA the ice-cream makers seek three to six new flavours annually – so there exists the possibility that Marulas could provide these flavours for many decades and so become an extremely valuable crop. Additionally, the fruit contains several times more Vitamin C than citrus. The fruits can

also be made into an extremely tasty jelly. However, I was unable to find just where these cultivars exist today and how they are doing? Finally, I am sure the AMarula® industry could thrive better on bigger fruits too!

Two larger 'horticultural' fruits, next to a usual wild fruit (left) and old fruits showing two, three and all four chambers of the ovary (right)

Marulas under a tree where elephant and people have not been able to collect the fruit, and a close-up look at Marula fruit (inset)

Old fruits in the leaf litter

23 | African Wildlife & Environment | Issue 81 (2022)