We have made excellent progress against the first year's milestones. We have some very important findings already on methods and technologies for Canarium processing. These will be used to inform best practice processing methods for Canarium and provide a solid basis for the second year of experiments. The project commenced in late April 2008 and has had only 1 fruiting season to date. We have also made significant progress on developing a participatory model, information gathering, and developing awareness raising material.
The major findings are:
Nut-in-shell when placed in water can be separated on floating or sinking. Nut-in-shell that floats generally has no kernels or small, possibly immature kernels, resulting on poor kernel recovery. The recommended processing protocol is to separate floaters and sinkers at point of purchase. Floaters will be of lower value and can either be discarded or downgraded.
Drying nuts at 40 C increased the percentage of whole kernels to around 80%. This is a very significant finding as Canarium nuts tend to break into small fragments and these are very difficult to market. Appropriate drying will improve the percentage of whole nuts and the whole nuts are likely to be the highest value processed product.
Nuts dried at 60 C showed excessive browning compared to nuts dried at 40C after 3 days.
Nuts dried at 40 C showed translucence after 3 days (translucence may be an indicator of nut damage).
As nuts dry, the testa sticks to the kernel and becomes more difficult to remove.
Solar dryers have been trialled for drying Canarium nuts. Nuts were placed into the trays for 2 days and temperatures measured. The temperatures were quite high, above 47 C and likely to damage the nuts.
Drying trials will now focus on finding drying regimes that increase whole kernel without causing damage such as translucence.
We are trialling some existing technology from the macadamia industry for Canarium processing and have had some success, for example
A TJ's nutcracker used for macadamias has been modified by the manufacturer for use with Canarium (Appendix 1). The nutcracker has created strong interest from growers in PNG and many have expressed interest in purchasing one.
A small scale drying silo used in macadamias has been built in PNG using local and imported materials.
We are investigating whether a small scale depulper used in the macadamia industry can be used for Canarium
The project has conceptualised a Canarium Industry Association as a participatory governance structure that will oversee all activity in the Canarium industry, including this research. This structure is envisaged as a multi-pronged approach to domestication and propagation, marketing and processing and will coordinate project activities, disseminate information and be a conduit between agencies and community representatives. It is expected the government will take the lead on this participatory structure.
An initial activity has been to set up information dissemination via the production of a regular newsletter that provides updates on projects and other information. The newsletters are currently available in English and Bislama and distributed at workshops as well as available through partner agencies.
Some baseline and contextual data have been gathered from document analysis and semi-structured discussions. These data have been analysed as key themes against which strategies can be developed to progress the Canarium nut industry. Rural industry participatory planning techniques will be used to flesh out strategy development and implementation in the sector, across sectors and across regions.