A family-owned farm on the outskirts of Darwin has become the Northern Territory’s largest producer of passionfruit.<\/p>\n
The business is going so well for the Moon family that they are expanding \u2014 and it has become their full-time job.<\/p>\n
Jason Moon, a fitter and turner by trade, said the move into farming started after developing a variety suited to the Top End.<\/p>\n
“About 10 years ago me and good mate started mucking around with a few passionfruit vines, and all of the sudden we got some awesome fruit come through.<\/p>\n
“So we thought, ‘Bugger it, let’s have a go at this’.<\/p>\n
“We planted 600 vines and the fruit were unbelievable, so we planted another 1,200 vines.<\/p>\n
“They’re a massive fruit \u2026 full of pulp and very sweet.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Passionfruits are sorted for market. (ABC Rural: Matt Brann)<\/p>\n
Mr Moon said fruit was picked daily to produce about 1.4 tonnes a week.<\/p>\n
A hybrid of the Panama variety, the average fruit size from his farm is 250 grams.<\/p>\n
The fruit has been sold locally in Darwin, but also trucked to the Sydney and Melbourne markets, where demand was growing.<\/p>\n
Expansion underway<\/p>\n
Mr Moon recently bought a nearby block of land and has started planting about 6,000 new vines.<\/p>\n
He said when in full production, the farms could produce up to 4 tonnes a week and was excited for consumers around Australia to try his passionfruit.<\/p>\n
“We’re sending some fruit down now for trials in Coles and Woolworths, so we’ll see how it goes and hopefully the customers love it,” he said.<\/p>\n
“They taste great and these fruit shine, we don’t need to wax them, they just come off the vine like that and you can see your reflection in them.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Passionfruit vines grow near Noonamah in the Northern Territory. (Supplied)<\/p>\n
Mr Moon said his whole family had become involved as the business expanded.<\/p>\n
“My son is now working here full time, my grandkids come along and help pick, my daughter-in-law is flat out grafting and that’s what we want, I want this to be a family business,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I’m loving everything about this … working with my family is very special.”<\/p>\n
NT Farmers Association chief executive Andrew Bourne said Mr Moon’s passionfruit business was a great story for northern agriculture.<\/p>\n
“NT Farmers are excited to see another grower who has started small, refined a great product, and is now successfully scaling up production,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Jason is also supporting the local community. He’s taking a local school on a tour of his farm in the coming weeks, which is great.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Mr Moon says he does not add wax to his fruit. (ABC Rural: Matt Brann)<\/p>\n
According to Hort Innovation, Australia produced 5,654 tonnes of passionfruit in 2023\/24 valued at $28.9 million.<\/p>\n
About 60 per cent of the national crop was produced in Queensland, with only 0.1 per cent produced in the Northern Territory, but that ratio will change quickly as the Darwin farm ramps up production.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A family-owned farm on the outskirts of Darwin has become the Northern Territory’s largest producer of passionfruit. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":81588,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,99,104,13330,61833,61835,61834,8867,1098,61832,102],"class_list":{"0":"post-81587","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-coles","12":"tag-farming","13":"tag-harvest","14":"tag-jason-moon","15":"tag-noonamah","16":"tag-northern-territory","17":"tag-nt","18":"tag-passionfruit","19":"tag-woolworths"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81587","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=81587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}