Different sort of nut finds favour

EACH autumn groups of Asians living locally head for the gingko trees planted on the sides of city streets including First Ave in Tauranga.
They pound the branches with their bamboo sticks so the gingko biloba fruit fall to the ground.
The fruit, with all sorts of health qualities, is a good catch. The nuts inside are a food delicacy in China, Japan and other parts of South-East Asia.
The local Kiwis will simply walk straight past them, the vile smell of the fruit putting them off - except for one Western Bay couple.
Graham and Mavis Dyer, owners of Bay Park Orchard in Ruahihi Rd, are growing gingko nuts, which have been around for more than 100 million years, for commercial production.
"The fruit stinks and everyone complains about them," said Mr Dyer. "But the gingko is part of the culture in Asia - it was growing before the dinosaurs arrived - and I watched the Asians knocking the nuts down and taking them home. I figured there must be a demand."
Over the years, the Dyers have collected the fruit off the trees in First Ave and in Cambridge, and used them for research purposes.
"We wanted to know how they could be stored and processed," said Mr Dyer, a former dairy farmer turned kiwifruit grower.
The Dyers planted 2000 gingko trees, three metres apart in rows six metres wide, on 2.4ha five years ago and expect to start producing nuts in two years.
They are the only commercial gingko nut growers in the Southern Hemisphere and have been given a TechNZ grant to discover the best way of storing them and maintaining the quality to fetch high prices in the ready-made Japanese market.
At full production, the Dyers are expecting to supply 25 tonnes of gingko nuts - a kilogram can be worth as much as $100 - to Japan in its offseason from June to September.
The present market in Japan is 1000 tonnes, supplied by local growers who have between six to 20 trees.
It is regarded as a cottage industry in Japan and the Dyers will finish up being one of the biggest gingko nut growers in the world.
Backed by the TechNZ investment programme, managed by Foundation for Research, Science and Technology (FRST), they have visited South-East Asia and studied the markets.
"We've made plenty of mistakes," said Mr Dyer. "The nuts are not part of our life and, when you are doing an exercise like this, your neighbour or horticultural consultant doesn't know anything more and you are in a lonely place. But there's a big future if you do it right."
The Dyers, who started their interesting exercise 10 years ago, thought they could use New Zealand budwood to graft the gingko trees but, after two years, they found the nuts were too small for the Japanese market.
Calling on their Japanese network and a bit of Kiwi cheekiness, they overcame the regulations and imported the real plant material, put it in quarantine and grafted the gingko trees back home.
The gingko block on their property is named after Mr Eguchi, who facilitated the transfer of the grafting material.
"We may have lost two years but we are confident of producing nuts suitable for the Japanese market," said Mr Dyer.
"They want nuts four to five grams in size and we think we can do six grams. They will pay on size. We are now five years down the track and we are starting to make progress."
The gingko nuts, sought after by the top chefs, are used in soups, stews and desserts, particularly congee, and are served at special occasions such as weddings and other celebrations. The Asians believe that the gingko nut makes them live longer.
The gingko tree has strange predilections. It doesn't know whether it's female or male until after 30 years and, when cut, reverts back to its juvenile state for seven years, refusing to produce any fruit.
That's the period the Dyers are in - and getting close to production.
They planted one male gingko tree to every four females. The branches of the male, which don't produce any fruit, spread out more - "like a pot gut" - and the females are pollinated by the wind.
While the pre-historic gingko is getting its act together in the Lower Kaimais, the Dyers are finalising their plans to establish lucrative exports to Japan.
They have contracted horticultural scientist Nigel Banks to complete storage trials.
"We've got five kilograms of nuts sitting in 83 modules in different temperatures," said Mr Dyer.
"The nuts are green and we have to retain that colour in storage for up to five months, or else the Japanese don't want to know.
"We are completing storage trials in 4, 5 and 20 degrees with three gases, and I suspect we will end up between 2-4 degrees," said Mr Dyer.
"We want to store the best nuts for a longer period and get the best prices - not just in Japan but also in Singapore, Hong Kong and Auckland." The nuts will go into restaurants and retail outlets including supermarkets.
The Dyers will process the gingko fruit on their own property. They intend to remove the smelly flesh and retain the light brown shell of the nut for export.
The flesh will be returned to the land and it must be handled by gloves - or else?
Five days after handling the fruit with your bare hand, you can peel off a very thin layer of skin - "like glad wrap" - without it hurting and leaving a red mark.
"There has to be possibilities for developing that (in the medical field) further down the track," said Mr Dyer. "The gingko fruit has got some serious compounds and they are powerful.
"You can't eat more than 12 nuts, they will knock you out."
Mr Dyer, brought up on a dairy farm near Pukekohe, first worked as an artificial breeding technician for Auckland Herd Improvement and then moved to the Western Bay.
He ended up with 120ha in Ruahihi Rd and milked a herd of 200 cows for 20 years. The Dyers' dairy farm was up-ended by the Ruahihi hydro power scheme and the canal cut right through their property.
They sold a large chunk of their land to Tauranga city and switched to growing kiwifruit in 1980. They now operate a well-established 7ha orchard and Mr Dyer has just subscribed to the new Zespri late gold variety.
He is now cutting out some of his green kiwifruit and grafting 0.5ha of the gold. He expects to hit commercial production of the new variety in 2012 - at the same that the gingko nuts are coming on stream.
The Dyers' gingko nuts and gold kiwifruit will both head for Japan.
"There's a lot of hype at present about China and that's fine. We've gone into a free trade agreement with China and the Prime Minister (John Key) is saying all the right things," said Mr Dyer.
"We are not represented enough in Japan and it will be to our detriment if we drop the ball there.
"Japan imports $700 billion worth of food in a year - the biggest problem there is that food production is on the backburner."