Australian Team Leader’s report Welcome to the first issue of the Macadamia Newsletter for Vietnam.. Vietnam and Australian governments have recognised the importance of collaborative d
Trang 1Australian Team Leader’s report Welcome to the first issue of the Macadamia Newsletter for Vietnam
Congratulations to Vietnam for joining the International Macadamia industry which includes Austra-lia, USA, South Africa, China and a number of other countries growing the worlds finest nut The nut
is a native of Australia’s rainforest and is still largely unknown, this is despite the fact, that it is one
of the healthiest and finest tasting nuts the world has to offer
Growing Macadamia in Vietnam has the potential to enhance economic, socials and environmental values of the country, while at the same time helping to expand the global macadamia production of
a higher value tree crop
Macadamia comprises of less than 2 % of the world nut trade, so additional production is needed if the world is to benefit from such a premium nut
Australia leads the world in terms of Nut in Shell (N.I.S.) production of over 40,000 tons a year and plantings of 21,000 ha more than double that of Hawaii and South Africa
Vietnam and Australian governments have recognised the importance of collaborative development
in the agricultural sector with regard to many crops including that of Macadamia Although Vietnam
is a poor country, it has been recognise as a valuable partner when it comes to agricultural initiatives such as that of Macadamia
Under the Collaborative Agricultural and Rural Development program (CARD) the Australian and Vietnam governments are supporting a project which aims to help Vietnam in its sustainable devel-opment of a macadamia industry and integrate this develdevel-opment with that of the other involved coun-tries, especially that of Australia The type of collaborative higher value agricultural development will help the poor farmers and agricultural workers while at the same time creating environmental and social benefits
Supported by
Macadamia Newsletter for Vietnam
Issue 1 2007
from little things big things grow
Trang 2CONTENTS
1
Australian team leaders report
2 – 3
Macadamia project report
4—5
The Macadamia study tour of China
6—7
Project news updates
• New training material –6
• The Lang son training workshop—6
• The 3 Macadamia nurseries; FSI,
Lang son, & Ba vi —6
• New nursery at Yen Thuy—7
• Financial returns—7
8
documentation
Project report
The Macadamia Project for Vietnam (037/05/ VIE)–CARD is titled “Establish nurseries and training to effectively propagate high quality trees and trial plantation models of Macadamia in 3 provinces of North Vietnam.”
This project is supported by the Collaboration for Rural Development Program, a joint initiative of the Vietnam and Australian governments
The 3 year project started in 2006 and is being conducted by the Center for Environment Tour-ism and Development (CETD) and the Subtropi-cal Farm Forestry Association of Australia (SFFA)
This project has establish a new Macadamia nurs-ery and enhanced three existing nurseries Also 3 principal variety trials of Macadamias are being established, of about 1 ha each involving 14 suit-able Macadamias varieties, in 3 provinces of north Vietnam In addition the project is involved with 3 organizations undertaking 16 other trials Training has been conducted in aspects of propa-gation, grafting, site design and preparation, planting, maintenance and plantation manage-ment at the nurseries and trial sites This has in-cluded the distribution of CD, DVD and power-point presentations as well as hands on training at
2 formal Workshops as well as training in the field 540 kg of seed nut from Australia and China have been provided to the nurseries along with 3000 sticks of Scion wood of the selected varieties and samples of grafting equipment dur-ing 2006 A further 1000 sticks of scion-wood was delivered to the nurseries in March 2007
A study tour to China was undertaken covering all the major nurseries and some key plantations
in southern China Reports of this tour including photos and a DVD video have been presented to the key stakeholders in Vietnam and Australia
A select group of small-holder farmers have been chosen to be involved with project activities in the provinces of Lang Son, B vi, Hoa Binh prov-inces In addition the project continues to involve all known key government agencies involved with Macadamias in Vietnam including MARD, FSI, RCFTI, RIFA and RIFV A number of pri-vate sector companies are also involved as is the Macca Club of Vietnam
Trang 3Significant progress has been made with regard to
the capacity building of extension and technical
staff since the commencement of the project in
January 2006
The project continued over 2006 and the last 6
months of 2007 and included meetings in
Austra-lia and Vietnam between participants
communi-cating progress and key information relating to
the participating organisations
The final report of the Macadamia study tour of
China was made up of 2 written reports by both
the Vietnamese team and the Australian team as,
as well as a DVD video and photo CD and
ac-companying notes A summary of this report is
included in this newsletter
The Australian team visit to Vietnam takes place
every 6 months, during which over a 1000 pieces
of Australian Scion wood has delivered to the 3
existing nurseries This included all of the 10
Australian varieties, 246, 344, 741, 814, 816, 842,
849, A4, A16, A38 (originally Hawaiian except
for A4, A16 and A32) selected for the trial The
team has also been visiting the FSI nursery and
the Yen Thuy new nursery and trial site and
pro-vided hands on training and information relating
to key aspects of progress Issues such as
germi-nation problems of Australian seed nut and poor
strike rates of some varieties were addressed It
was decided to import future seed nut from China
not Australian The strike rate of A varieties is
very poor and this was re-confirmed to the
nurs-eries It was agreed that younger wood from
Aus-tralia should be used as scion in the future
Solu-tions to problems with the new florist grafting
tape were demonstrated Some of the nurseries
have adopted the Australian grafting techniques
demonstrated during the training sessions This
along with techniques practiced in Vietnam and
China were demonstrated to all participating
tech-nicians once again enabling techtech-nicians to better
train grafting staff and fine tune techniques
Those that had not attempted these techniques
have been encouraged to do so Further input was
provided by the visiting 3 Chinese collaborators
in this training and information delivery process
at the Lang son Training Workshop detailed
be-low
Nurseries that had tried Australian formulas for propagation and potting mixes were commended and encouraged to keep comparative data Early evidence indicated that the new mixes were working well
The highlight for this period was the Lang son Macadamia Training Workshop held over 2 days and involving 44 participants The comprehensive program included presentations and field visits The program included presentations by the Viet-namese and Australian project leaders, Hoang Hoe and Martin Novak, providing an overview of project progress and key aspects of project devel-opment
Kim Wilson CEO of Gray Plantations and AMS Vice Chairman, made two presentations including
a project update of the 3 principal trial sites and nurseries and an overview of Macadamia R&D in Australia and the World including the latest infor-mation presented at the Macadamia Congress in Brasil August 2006 A summary is included in this newsletter
The project partners presented reports on the re-sults of their activities and challenges Dr Hai of FSI presented a report on his and Dr Kha’s Maca-damia research ranging over 6 years and 6 prov-inces of Vietnam Again a summary of this report
is included in this newsletter
Dang thi thuy Thao of WASI presented a brief report prepared by Tran Vinh of their trials at the workshop and have continued to work collabora-tively with the project team Some aspects of this report are included in this newsletter
The visiting Chinese delegation represented by
Dr Chen presented a comprehensive report on R&D in Quangxi China The presentation fo-cused on a trial of 8 varieties examining quality and yield of NIS This was followed by a pictorial presentation of nursery practice which stimulated
a debate focusing on the variations between prac-tices in China, Australia and Vietnam The field sites visit provided an opportunity for participants
to demonstrate and further debate their various practices
The project is now working with organizations that are undertaking 16 Macadamia trials There are the 3 principal Varietal trials at Lang son, Ba
vi and Yen Thuy, the 8 FSI trials and the 6 WASI trials On top of that there is the ThaiBinh Foods planting about to commence and the 8+ trials in China
Trang 4The Macadamia Study Tour of
China
In March 2006, as a part of the Macadamia
CARD project,11 participants went on a fact
find-ing tour of China to look at how the country’s
Macadamia Industry has developed and what
les-sons could be learned for Vietnam The team
spent 10 days in China involved in briefings,
presentations and field visits, taking photographs,
videos and detailed notes The tour covered over
5000 klms of south China spanning from the east
coast to the southwestern border regions The tour
entailed traveling by 4WD, bus, train and plane
A DVD Video and photo CD have been produced
of the highlights of the study
A report of preliminary research of Macadamia
was provide by Dr Chen and is available through
the CEDT office
Prof Hoang Hoe has prepared a comprehensive
report in Vietnamese Since he speaks, writes and
reads Chinese he was able to translate into
Eng-lish during most of the tour for Kim Wilson and
Martin Novak the Australian project team
repre-sentatives
We advise readers of this report to also refer to
Prof Hoe’s Vietnamese report, which is very
comprehensive The translated Summary English
version is Part 2 of this report We also advise
readers to refer to the DVD Video and CD photos
of the tour in order to experience the atmosphere
of the Macadamia culture of China and for
addi-tional technical and experiential information
These are available though the CETD Office,
Ha-noi as is Prof Hoe’s report
Tour Participants
Martin Novak, President SFFA, Austra-lian Project leader
Kim Wilson, Vice Chair AMS Manager Gray Plantations Project Consultant Hoang Hoe, National Director, Project 037VIE05
Nguyen Huu Loc, Chair, Vietnam Maca-damia Club, Interpreter
Nguyen cong Tan, President, Vietnam As-sociation of Rural Industry Small & Medium Enterprises
Nguyen huu Quang, President, Vietnam Forestry Association
Hoang Phuc, Managing Director, Long Phuong Co Ltd
Nguyen Duc Son, Managing Director, A Chau Co Ltd
Dang van Xuan, Chairman, Yen Thuy Dis-trict People Committee
Chen Xenguo, Chinese Expert, Subtropical Crops Institute of Guangxi,
Key regions visited included, Nanning Guangxi, Zhangjiang Guangdong, Kun-ming and Jinghong Yunnan and Long Zhou Guangxi
Key places visited included:
GAMac Guangxi Fusui Company Chongzua city
in the Fusui district Guangxi province, Guangxi Subtropical Crops Research Institute, Guangxi Subtropical Crops Research Centre, South Sub-tropical Crops Research Institute Zhangjiang, Yunnan Forestry Administration Kunming, Insti-tute of Tropical Crops at Jing hong, Jing Hong State Farm, Long Zhou State Farm and Nursery
Trang 5Summary of lessons learnt
There are some limitations to the following
ob-servations At times the translation from Chinese
and Vietnamese was difficult Also cultural
dif-ferences and variations in definition may have
affected the perception of the outcomes of the
research However every effort has been made to
record accurate information:
The group visited most of the main large
nurs-eries including GAMac – Fusui Co 100000
Seedlings; Guangxi Subtropical Crops
Re-search Institute - 50,000 Grafted and
seed-lings; Zangzhiang - 100000 Grafted,
cut-tings and seedlings; Yunnan Macadamia
Development Company - 200000 grafted
trees available (Claimed to be the biggest
in Asia) Tree costs range from 12, 15-18
Yuan
The best nursery and plantation companies
were the 2 Joint Venture Companies
GA-Mac Fusui Co in Guangxi and Yunnan
Macadamia Industry Development Ltd in
Yunnan Both had Australian partners,
pri-vate investors and state support
Yunnan Province is the most suited for
Maca-damias both in terms of climate and soil It
has by far the largest plantings
approxi-mately 3300 ha
Best varieties from all sites visited included
695, 788, OC, 741, 900, 800 and some of
the Chinese selections
Varieties included some good selections of
high performing trees, however there was
a lot of uncertainty of varieties and
varie-ties that were mis-labelled or incorrectly
identified based on Australian
understand-ing
Long Zhou State Farm and Nursery, near the
Lang son border also showed some good
tree selections, one of which is being
in-cluded in the project trials
Field performance is based on highest yielding trees but these are few, up to 11 in some places So the genetic diversity will be small if they become the principle industry trees Original mother tree variety and ori-gin are uncertain in many cases
The quantity of grafted trees is mixed some good some not so good in all the nurseries Claims of 95 % success rates appeared in-accurate upon viewing trees in the nursery Generally nursery success rates and pro-duction rates appeared based on best per-formance rather than averages, which would provide a more accurate picture Potting mix formula for cloned Eucalyptus at Forest Research Centre (Not allowed pho-tos) may have promise for Macadamia pot-ting mixes This included charcoal rice husks, composed sawdust, sand and fertil-izer
There was little evidence of a well structured industry Cooperation between organiza-tions lacked a well-developed management structure considering the 20-year develop-mental history of Macadamias in China
Trang 6Project News updates:
New training material
New training material including a “Macadamia
Nursery Manual for Vietnam” 2007 and a video
“Grafting techniques in Australia and Vietnam “
have been developed this year This is in addition
to materials developed in 2006 listed below
The manual focuses on the propagation of
grafted macadamia trees and covers such topis as
the raising of seedlings, grafting techniques,
nurs-ery design and and record keeping It is
princi-pally based on proven Australian techniques that
have been adapted to suit the situation in Vietnam
The Lang son Training Workshop
The Lang son Training Workshop was the project
highlight of 2006 The effort and ability of the
Vietnamese team leader and the CETD staff in
planning then implementing the activities
neces-sary to ensure a comprehensive program and
presentations and gain good participation by all
know stakeholders was outstanding and is a great
asset of the project
The presentations by all, were of a high standard
and facilitated broad participation It was
particu-larly encouraging to see technicians and
exten-sion staff, provide informative reports and
dem-onstrate their keenness by a high level of
involve-ment in all sessions both at the workshop and in
the field There was a notable difference in this regard when compared to the involvement during the Introductory Training Session held in Hanoi earlier in the year Considering the limited experi-ence and exposure to the Macadamia industry it is
to their credit that they are responding so effec-tively
The workshop was held in an atmosphere of openness which allowed participants to raise is-sues of concern, including the need for increased support for the trials, the need to undertake more pilot plantings in other provinces, the need to im-prove the quality of the seed and scion wood and the desire to involve more smaller farmers as well
as to link more strongly to bigger commercial interests Ways of addressing these issues were debated and are being implemented
All presentations are included in the Workshop Proceedings listed in this newsletter
The 3 existing Macadamia Nurseries FSI, Lang son & Ba vi and the variety trials
It is encouraging to see progress in the nurseries and trial sites Most of the information and tech-niques delivered in previous sessions and visits were being tried, including grafting techniques and equipment, propagation techniques, potting mixes and fertilizer regimes
It was good to see the progress of FSI research in Macadamia presented by Dr Hai and Mr Kien at the Training workshop Clearly FSI is the princi-ple Macadamia research body underpinning the projects role as well as that of some of the other private developments They are using a compre-hensive range of genetic material including the following from Australia: Daddow, 246, 294,
344, 816,849, 856, 741 and NG8 and 2 varieties from China OC and A800
Also trees grafted from original trees planted in
Ba Vi in 1994 including: MC1, MC2, MC3, MC4, MC5, MC6, MC7, MC8, MC9, MC10, MC11, ðC1 (trees planted from Australian seed), ðC2 (trees planted from seed in Ba Vi) and ðC3 (Cutting trees in Ba Vi)
Mrs Ngo mai Phuong, Mr Nguyen Duc Son, Nguyen thu Van, of the Lang son Seed Enterprise
Co under the directorship of Hoang Le Minh have also been doing some very good research
Lang son workshop: Dr Chen (China), Martin
No-vak, Hoang Hoe and Kim Wilson
Trang 7both in the nursery and in trialing macadamia
varieties in the field
They have been successful at trialing cutting and
cloning techniques This is very important work
along with similar work by FSI which will help
the industry produce macadamia trees quickly
and cost effectively
Mr Nguyen Cong Duong and Bui Vu Anh at the
Ba vi Nursery have been successfully propagating
and grafting successfully all of the scion-wood
received from Australia They now have trees
old enough to take scion wood from And their
nursery is now providing trees for the trials and
other plantings
Progress at the new macadamia nursery at
Yen Thuy
The progress at the new nursery, accords with
design plans and exceeds expectation of the
Aus-tralian team It is already demonstrating
tech-niques include seed germination in well drained
sand, potting mixes using much less soil and
more sand and organic matter, larger potting
bags, a lighter shade cloth and the use of plastic
and gravel underlay for the potting bags
The Long Phuong Company’s new nursery is
us-ing the people from the local community, to build the new nursery, for preparation of plantation land Six workers are involved in propagation, preparation of potting mix, and maintenance The Company has also successfully submitted a pro-posal to the Sweden Environment Fund (SEF) focusing on " the village environment" The Project objectives includes helping 20 house-holds, by building, Eco toilets, planting high quality grass in home-gardens, building 2 water wells to provide clean water and organized 4 Training Courses on Environment protection to all the local village people The project has devel-oped successfully to date and compliments the Macadamia project
Financial returns
The Macadamia Capital Development and Finan-cial Projection Model has been prepared, based
on available cost data to date for a generic 20 ha plantation providing NPV and IRR projections over a 20 year period This is based on a model developed in Australia and adapted for the situa-tion in Vietnam
Data used in the model has been collect since
2005 Additional data and some analysis was pre-sented by participants in the Lang son Workshop
of October 2006 The yield data is based on Aus-tralian figures Consideration of Chinese yield provided some validation, but until good yield data is available from Vietnam the resulting IRR and NPV figures should be treat with significant qualification They should not be used to make serious commercial or research assumptions Even much of the cost data needs to be expanded and progressively validated as the project pro-gresses and the infant industry grows in Vietnam The model will be presented at the next Macada-mia Training Workshop Copies of the Model are available from the CETD office
FSI Nursery Kim Wilson, Dr Think, Dr Hai,
Mr Phuc and Mr Kien
New Nursery at Yen Thuy
Ba vi Variety trial by Jessy, Phuc and Kim
Trang 8Macadamia Project Supporting Documentation available through the CETD office
Video - DVDs
1 Macadamia in Vietnam 2004
2 Macadamia in Vietnam 2005
3 Macadamia Study Tour of China 2006 **
4 Macadamia in Vietnam – March/April 2006**
5 Grafting Macadamias in Australia March 2006**
6 Macadamias in Australia – AMS Promotional Video
7 Grafting techniques in Australia and Vietnam 2005 - 2006
Photo Presentations CDs
1 Grafting Macadamia in Australia – 2006
2 Macadamia China Study Tour – March/April 2006
3 Australian Macadamia Nurseries – 2006
4 Macadamias in Vietnam – 2004-6
5 Illustrated guide to identification of macadamia cultivars in South Africa by Peter Allan
Training and Support Documents
1 Choosing Varieties and Tree Spacing *
2 Row and Tree Spacing Options *
3 Planting Procedure *
4 Managing Young Trees *
5 Propagation *
6 Notes on Macadamia China Study Tour – Novak
7 Notes on Macadamia China Study Tour – Hoe
8 Report on the Macadamia Study Tour of China – Part 1 Novak Part 2 Hoe
9 Proceeding of the Macadamia Training Workshop Lang son 2006
10 Proceeding of Macadamia Training Workshop Ba vi 2007
11 Macadamia Nursery Manual for Vietnam 2007
News Letters
Macadamia News Letter for Vietnam—Issue 1 2007
Note:
1 * Notes based on Australian Macadamia Manual Translations were provided at the Lang son Training Workshop October 2006
2 **Training support documentation and materials provided to project participants during the Workshop
All other documents were provide to participants at the Macadamia Introductory Workshop in Hanoi April 2006 or directly at field site training sessions