Kenya: Passion fruit project aims to boost farmers' earnings

With much fanfare, last year saw consecutive announcements of drives to double the wealth of Kenyan fruit farmers, which were funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in partnership with Coca-Cola. Targeted at smallholders, the project is built on the emerging tenets of raising agricultural output, better seeds, better farm management and clear market channels. The base point for the launch with 1,000 farmers in Eastern and lower altitude regions of Central Province has been the introduction of a yellow passion fruit variety developed by the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (Kari), which is high yielding, tolerant to diseases and bugs, and cuts growing costs by half, compared to the traditionally farmed purple passion fruit.
The yellow variety released by Kari's Thika centre took 10 years of research, cross breeding and upgrading with local species. From planting, it takes nine to 10 months to get the first fruits. Almost the same time as purple, said Koori Njuguna, the Kari project manager who oversaw its breeding. But its yields per hectare range from 30 to 40 tonnes per harvest compared to 15 for the purple variety. A kilogramme of either variety fetches a minimum of Sh18 to Sh20. However, yellow passion farmers realise higher profits due to lower growing costs since the purple passion fruit requires spraying six times each fruit season, compared to three times a season for the yellow variety.
According to Kari reports, the yellow passion fruit is resistant to Fusarium wilt, and is also tolerant to phytophthora root rot, nematodes, brown spot and woodiness virus.It is for these reasons that the new seeds have formed the backbone of the four-year project started last July by Technoserve, and funded by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Named Project Nurture, the drive is targeted at 37,000 fruit farmers, and aims to double fruit incomes by also achieving best practice in farm management and opening markets for the fruit. The new seed has made this all the more possible, with industrial fruit processors also opting for the yellow passion over the purple passion, because it is sweeter, less acidic and bigger, meaning it has more juice. In addition, the yellow passion fruit converts into 35 per cent juice, compared with 20 to 25 per cent for the purple passion.