A regional Victorian grower’s tribute to his mum has become the most successful venture of his life.<\/p>\n
Mildura grower Mick Costa’s mother grew up in Italy and would fondly recall a small sweet fruit \u2014 the jujube.<\/p>\n
Jujubes come in various sizes, have a sweet-tart flavour and are often compared to apples.<\/p>\n
The fruit, which is also known as a Chinese date, is thought to have originated in south-west Asia and comes from one of the oldest cultivated fruit trees in the world.<\/p>\n
It was only after moving to regional Victoria that Mr Costa encountered the fruit again \u2014 and in memory of his mother planted several trees.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Jujubes grow well in Mildura’s hot, sunny climate. (Supplied: Jujubes Australia)<\/p>\n
Now, Mr Costa said if he had his time again he would pursue the fruit more aggressively.<\/p>\n
“I’ve been in several industries, I’ve done grapes, I’ve done vegetables, construction as well \u2026 tried a lot of things, and the most successful has been these jujubes,” he said.<\/p>\n
“For the love of my mother, I wanted to have a look at jujubes and it’s the best thing I ever done in my life.”<\/p>\n
Mr Costa said the “honey-sweet” fruit was easy to grow and he was surprised it was not more popular in Sunraysia.<\/p>\n
“They’re very easy to grow, the only time they require work is during picking \u2014 which you don’t mind, that’s when the money comes in,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Other than that, I give them a prune which is much easier than vines and that’s it.<\/p>\n
“As far as spraying goes, there are no diseases we worry about, we only spray for fruit fly.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Jujubes are like a cross between an apple and a nashi pear. (ABC Landline: Kerry Staight)<\/p>\n
Mr Costa said there was strong domestic demand for jujubes in Australia.<\/p>\n
“There’s a lot of Asians in Australia now, so the demand for them is there,” he said.<\/p>\n
“If you had a volume, you could also export them.<\/p>\n
“If I was 20 years younger, I’d go and whack in 50 acres or 100 acres, because I’ve been asked if I’d pick some for export.”<\/p>\n
Strong domestic demand<\/p>\n
In 2023, Australia’s largest producer of kiwi fruit and nashi pears, Seeka Australia, took a bet on the jujube \u2014 planting 40,000 trees near Shepparton in Victoria.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Jonathan Van Popering says harvesting is the most expensive part of jujubes. (ABC Landline: Kerry Staight)<\/p>\n
Seeka Australia general manager of operations Jonathan Van Popering said the trees had been a worthwhile investment.<\/p>\n
“Demand has been pretty strong, last year was probably one of our best years,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We had great fruit quality and sold through really well \u2014 no issues at all.<\/p>\n
“Jujubes price better than our kiwifruit, nashi, or stone fruit. We’re definitely satisfied with where it sits.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Jujube trees grow quickly and within about a year are ready for harvesting. (ABC Landline: Kerry Staight)<\/p>\n
Mr Van Popering said as the trees mature and produce more fruit Seeka Australia would consider its options.<\/p>\n
“We’re investigating export markets and expect to export some fruit this coming season, we haven’t exported yet simply because of the low volumes,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Local demand has been really strong, so we haven’t needed to; as volumes increase, we’ll start looking outward to hit the price points we need.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A regional Victorian grower’s tribute to his mum has become the most successful venture of his life. Mildura…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":311828,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,99,14942,176674,47019,176672,48066,20664,176673],"class_list":["post-311827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-fruit","tag-fruit-trees","tag-growing","tag-jujube","tag-mildura","tag-produce","tag-seeka-australia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}