(Photo credit: University of Queensland )
New and improved varieties of passionfruit developed by The University of Queensland could be available to commercial growers as soon as next year.
The as yet unnamed varieties have been developed as part of a 5-year National Passionfruit Breeding and Evaluation Program funded by Hort Innovation, and led by UQ's Dr Mobashwer Alam .
"We've spent the past 3 years focused on making transformational changes for the passionfruit industry, developing varieties that produce bigger fruit, on higher yielding vines as well as improving flavour and vigour," Dr Alam said.
"We have 2 varieties in the pre-commercial stage and another 20 in the pipeline, several of which look very promising.
"The advanced genetic selection technology we're using in the breeding program accelerates our work and we hope will result in a breeding pipeline that will offer improvements every year."
Patrick Mason and Mobashwer Alam.
(Photo credit: University of Queensland)
Dr Patrick Mason said the team at UQ's Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation worked with farmers to trial the new varieties at 5 sites in southern and central Queensland and northern New South Wales.
"If you're not talking to farmers then you are doing it blind," Dr Mason said.
"At a fundamental level, they know more about passionfruit than we do and they always will, so having them walk through the trials with us has been invaluable.
"One of our new selections in particular is looking very good.
"It's dark purple in colour, fruits well and is delicious - from a consumer perspective it will be more likely to grab a buyer's attention than the current commercial varieties."
Sunshine Coast farmer Keith Paxton helped trial the new varieties on his Woombye property and said there were benefits in working with UQ.
"Some of these new passionfruit varieties look very good and have a very nice taste and if you put those two things together, we'll come up with a good variety," Mr Paxton said.
"Genetic identification of the different traits within the fruit has enhanced and sped up the development process.
"Growers really look forward to the industry developing material and getting something good for consumers."
The National passionfruit breeding and evaluation program is funded by Hort Innovation using the passionfruit levy, with contributions from the Australian Government, the Department of Primary Industries and The University of Queensland.
The Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation is a research institute at The University of Queensland, established with and supported by the Department of Primary Industries.
