NUCIS number 10. December 2001. 48 pages (full ... - IAMZ - ciheam

THE AUSTRALIAN PISTACHIO
INDUSTRY
The motivation for the Australian pistachio
industry developed out of concern in
the 1960s over poor financial returns to
grape growers. The government put resources
into developing alternative crops
such as pistachios. That the Australian
wine grape industry is now extremely profitable
and expanding rapidly says something
about the cyclical nature of agriculture
and also something about the ability
of governments to pick winners in its industry
policy. However, the Australian
pistachio industry is the result. The industry
is still small, less than 500 hectares
with 2001 production reaching almost
1,000 metric tons. However, after almost
20 years of commercial farming, the opportunities
are now there for significant
expansion.
In the 1960s an introduction and selection
programme was commenced by the research
arm of the Australian government,
CSIRO, to identify pistachio varieties suitable
for Australian conditions. The land
and water available in Australia suitable
for pistachios tend to have lower chill
hours than the traditional pistachio
growing regions of the world. The criteria
for selection were high, consistent yields
of good quality nuts with high split rates,
under Australian conditions.
From a large number of seedlings and imported
clones, CSIRO selected an open
pollinated seedling of ‘Red Aleppo’. The
‘Red Aleppo’ used came from the UC collection
at Chico, California. ‘Red Aleppo’
is described in the original CSIRO publication
as “an important Syrian variety”.
Syrian growers today claim not to know of
it. Brooks and Olmo describe ‘Red Aleppo’
as an old cultivar from Syria or Turkey
that was introduced into California by R.A.
Fuller. They continue saying it may be a
seedling of Turkish or Syrian ‘Red Aleppo’.
In the early 1980’s CSIRO released
the selected clone and named it ‘Sirora’.
Cultivar ‘Sirora’ has a number of desirable
characteristics.
• It has a very high split rate in commercial
production, 90 to 97% is typical.
• It has an excellent green kernel colour
and good flavour.
• It will produce reasonably well even in
years with poor chilling hours (1,000) although it is much
worse in low chilling years. Nut maturity is
spread over three weeks from the end of
February to the end of March. Growers
with large orchards double shake ‘Sirora’
trees to maximise the return of clean shell,
split nuts with the shakers about 10 to 16
days apart.
Small areas of ‘Kerman’ are also grown.
Yields are typically 55% to 65% of the ‘Sirora’
yield. Non-split rates are very high,
typically 15-25%.
The rootstocks used are: P. terebinthus,
P. atlantica and Pioneer Gold (P. integerrima).
Whilst Verticillium wilt (V.dahlia) is
'Sirora' cluster at harvesting time in Mildura, Australia
22 FAO-CIHEAM - Nucis-Newsletter, Number 10 December 2001