The Australian passionfruit sector's marketing campaigns are targeting younger consumers, and with limited resources the big push has been in education. 

"Every body needs passion" is the slogan seen on posters distributed by Passionfruit Australia Inc and funded with the support of grower levies, but for the group's chair Tina McPherson a large part of garnering a stronger presence has been "people power".

"It's been more about putting ourselves out there, making sure people are aware of it, talking to the supermarkets and the greengrocers," McPherson tells www.freshfruitportal.com.

"Most discussions center around handling and display of passionfruit which is a poor little misunderstood funny-looking purply black ball.

"Generally they’re not always displayed well and they’re left to sit so they become these poor little wrinkly balls, which doesn’t actually hurt the product inside but they don’t have a lot of visual appeal. The visual appeal is on the inside so you have to be very clever with discussions about handling, display and storage."

She emphasizes there is no additional sweetness when the fruit is wrinkled either, contrary to a common misconception.

"You wait for the passionfruit to fall from the vine - you don't pick it," she says.

"When it falls from the vine it’s not wrinkly at all, it’s ready, it’s smooth-skinned. If I sent wrinkly fruit to the market then I would be downgraded for doing so and people would know that’s old fruit.

"By the same token the pulp inside has not been harmed by the wrinkling. Wrinkling is just due to dehydration – it doesn’t really make the pulp taste any sweeter."

In conjunction with the educational work, Passionfruit Australia is also trying to diversify the sector's consumer demographic.

"You’ve got your consumers who are going to buy passionfruit regardless, but they generally tend to be older consumers - people probably over 45-50, for whom passion fruit formed part of their growing up.

"So our target market is a lot more in that 20s and 30s range, and if you look at the marketing of "Every body needs passion" you can see that.

"We have to be very smart with the use of our levy money. We’ve done a lot of in-store sampling and surveying – we can’t do mass campaigns, we simply don’t have the money."

Another potential outlet is export, which will form part of workshop discussions on the upcoming AGM on Sept. 23.

"Export to me presents a lot of opportunities. It would give a lot of smoothing of the peaks and troughs of supply in the domestic market, and it requires a little bit more work and marketing on behalf of the grower, and it probably requires more attention to packaging than is currently the focus of a lot of the industry," McPherson says.

"But I see that as just a generally moving forward of the industry. I think there is potential for export and I think we are possibly missing out by not exploring those options more quickly.

"We’ve gone part way down the road of having irradiation tests done on passion fruit and then of course that’s proved that irradiation has no detrimental effects on passion fruit, so then we’ve got to look at what markets we can access."

She says New Zealand would be the most obvious export destination, but Asia and the United States could also be possibilities.

"Some passionfruit is exported but not directly by growers. Some of it ends up in Hong Kong and the UAE, but I think there’s probably potential for more markets.

"The States would be another potential market – there is some passionfruit produced in California, but they’re really not familiar with the fruit."

When asked about the potential of the European market, McPherson says there is probably too much competition with African countries whose growers have much lower labor costs.

"It's highly labor intensive which makes us very non-competitive on a world market, particularly with countries in Africa."

Production outlook

McPherson says Australia's passionfruit industry can roughly be divided into two camps - the purple variety and the Panama variety also known as 'Pandora'. The yellow varieties of passion fruit typical of Latin American markets are not common in Australia.

As the Panama variety is more of a cash crop - planted annually and not requiring much work - there is very little data available about its cultivation. McPherson says it generally yields prices at around half of the more popular purple variety.

Horticulture Innovation Australia estimates the country has 130 commercial growers producing 3,800 metric tons (MT) per year with a farm gate value of AUD$12 million (US$9 million). In addition, a further 500MT of passionfruit are sent for processing with an approximate value of AUD$500,000 (US$377,738).

In other words, not a particularly large industry.

McPherson says there are harvest peaks in summer and winter, and in general the fruit is available for 10 months of the year.

"It’ll vary to vary farm to farm, region to region, and generally you’d say February-March you’ve got three or four weeks when we’re not in production, and in October-November – that’s the rule of thumb.

"We’ve just been through our winter peak and we haven’t had the big flush we usually have – we’ve had much steadier production than in other years, so it hasn’t been as much of a rollercoaster.

"That that being said there’s been a lot of fruit and prices have not held up really well through this winter."

She says September, October and November are generally the quietest months, and "consequently they’re when the prices are the highest, the returns are the best".

However, this year weather conditions augur well for a more steady, extended supply.

"It’s been an extraordinarily mild winter which is something none of us have really dealt with before – I mean, we have a mild winter because we’re Queensland obviously, but it’s been milder than mild.

"It’s a bit difficult to gauge your flowering and know when your fruit is going to fall."

Where McPherson grows passionfruit in Bundaberg, Queensland, farms were still flowering in August which is not unheard of but still unusual.

"We would hope that would give us fruit in times when supplies are a little lower in September and October."

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