Every year, come October/November and newspapers start carrying stories on kinoo. By following April, the topic disappears to reappear next year.

I am a witness and a party to this phenomenon for more than 20 years — some realities, some progress and mostly rhetoric. This year, prominent stories published included several reports on export in wooden crates vs card board boxes, the hopes attached to the Horticulture Development Board, seedless fruits, the Punjab government talking about citrus nurseries and upcoming annual fruit exposition in Islamabad.

The reasons for regular/seasonal attention to kinoo are very simple. More than 70 per cent citrus grown in Pakistan is kinoo mandarin. Unnoticed, the cheap availability of Kinoo to domestic consumer has helped this nation fight a silent killer i.e. vitamin and mineral deficient diets; Notably, kinoo is a major exportable item; and, family income of a large number of small and medium size growers and traders is linked to kinoo.

Today (16-01-2003), I was pleased to watch a one-hour PTV programme ‘Zarai Seminar’ on kinoo held at Sargodha. Among the presentations, there were genuine complaints from relevant quarters, the usual departmental rituals and a clip showing Malik Afaq Tiwana, Chairman, Horticulture Development Board. Credit must be given to the very articulate compere (Mr Idrees) of the programme. I am prompted to write this article in response to three-point highlight in Malik Tiwana’s clip on citrus i.e. seedless citrus/kinoo, nursery certification and export marketing and standards. The first two are long-term issues while the third one is a matter of immediate concern.

Seedless kinoo: Seedless fruits fetch premium price. There are many naturally occurring as well as manmade seedless varieties of citrus and other fruits. Several mechanisms are known and exploited to produce seedless fruits. Two viable approaches are available to breeding seedless kinoo. Firstly, conventional inter-ploid (2N x 4N) hybridization can be combined with tissue culture procedures to produce triploids (3N) — what I call a ‘biotechnology approach’. The triploids are seedless. Secondly, radiation breeding can be employed in widening the scope of kinoo improvement programme. In both cases, more than one generations (of a tree) are to be raised taking several years each. There is no shortcut, hence, a long gestation period. The normal seeded kinoo is diploid (2N), and tetraploid (4N) kinoo was introduced in 1988 at the University of Agriculture, Faisalabad (UAF) as the second required parent for inter-ploid hybridization. It took about five years before we had first set of crosses achieved. Afterwards, annual increments of triploids were added to the breeding programme. By 1997, a garden of triploids had started to produce flowers and fruits. The new hybrids (triploids) must undergo empirical testing before being accepted as a commercially viable replacement — or a supplement to the seeded kinoo.

The UAF citrus breeding garden was visited by many enlightened and responsible people, including Dr. Imtizaj Hussain, the then Federal Agriculture Development Commissioner. Three Ph.D and several M.Sc of these research projects were at different stages of completion. The programme was initially funded by the University Grants Commission (now HEC) followed by a grant from the Pakistan Science Foundation. A considerable investment had gone into it. We were sure to have the initial on-farm trials of seedless strains started by the turn of last century when the official snags started to hit. Most of the plant material was destroyed or abandoned.

The UAF-based kinoo improvement programme is now in the process of resurrection. If saved from further snags, it has the potential of meeting the challenge of producing commercially acceptable seedless kinoo or other alternative citrus varieties.

To further explain the nature of work, I would like to mention here that the seeded kinoo is a manmade variety created at the University of California, Riverside, USA (my alma mater). The parental cross of kinoo was made in 1915. It was released as a new variety in 1935. And, it was successfully adapted in Pakistan during 1950s and 1960s. It is in my personal knowledge that the creators of seeded kinoo are also striving hard to produce seedless kinoo. If produced (patented) elsewhere, the seedless kinoo will not be available to us free of cost! Knowing the arrival of WTO regime within two years, it is high time that we patent seedless kinoo as our own entity and keep the illusions apart from the real life.

Nursery certifications: Planting fruit is a long-term investment. The results of investment in fruit trees is not apparent until after many years from planting when the trees start bearing fruit. A bad tree could have inherent genetic defects or be a carrier of diseases. The genetic defects occur due to excessive load of somatic mutations. Nursery plants carry the diseases either because of the use of infected budwood or due to nursery conditions (mostly soil-borne). As a result, unhealthy orchards are short lived and produce only a fraction of potential yields. The loss due to poor quality of fruit from sick and variable plants reduces the returns further. The world’s best fruit growing countries have self-sustaining (through fees and sales) nursery certification programme implemented by the government agencies and backed by R&D institutions. A certification programme ensures supply of healthy and true-to-type nursery plants to the growers. As a result, the orchards have long productive life, high yields (3 times more than ours) and quality of fruits. Exotic models (blue prints) of nursery certification programmes are known. The essential features of certification programme include: a laboratory base for tissue culture and diagnosis of diseases, greenhouses and shadehouses of propagation and quarantine work, field plantations of foundation trees of rootstock and scion varieties, logistic support, and supervised marketing and certification of nursery trees. An indigenous model of nursery certification needs to be developed.

Rules have been enacted and notified by the government under the Seed Act, which needs to be implemented by developing an infrastructure and research. Once in force, this programme shall involve documentation and registration of all nursery operations that will be obliged to pay fees and buy materials and services from this organization. Making the programme self-sustaining for all times to come.

The impact of the programme will be seen as true-to-type and disease free plants leading to 2-3 fold increase in the yield and improvement of fruit quality needed to maintain the exportable surplus. The surplus will also enable the juice processing units to operate on easily available and affordable raw material. The processed juice is a value added export commodity.

The certification programme has the added advantage of meeting the upcoming standards requirements under the WTO.

Once again, the UAF took the lead. An opportunity arose under the Ministry of Science and Technology’s STED (science and technology for economic development) programme,a highly thoughtful initiative of Prof Ataur Rehman. We submitted and successfully defended a proposal for developing a model citrus nursery certification programme at the UAF. The STED fund has provided Rs25.7 million for the model programme which was launched on 24th May 2001. The programme has the following objectives:

i) To initiate a base for budwood certification programme.

ii) To establish rootstock tree selection and propagation for citrus.

iii) To initiate container grown citrus nursery plant production.

iv) To provide basis for the sale of certified fruit plants.

v) To induct precision in to the process of nursery operations.

vi) To develop standard operating procedures/manual needed for implementation of a nursery certification programme at national level.

If saved from ‘snags’, the STED-funded project could serve the kinoo/citrus growers for all times to come. The university should have the R&D role. The commercial side could be lent to NGOs or grower associations/cooperatives. The university’s model could be replicated by provincial governments. The scope of certification programme could also be extended to other fruits and ornamental nurseries.

Kinoo export/standards: The WTO’s liberalization of trade by 2005 will certainly affect the kinoo exports. However, it should not be taken as a handicap. All it asks is to come up with proper description of production and processes involved in the international trade of any commodity. It does not call for banning wooden crates in favour of cardboard cartons. For sure, the export in cardboard boxes is more presentable and likely to fetch better price. But, only when the cardboards are strong enough to resist the stress and strain of transportation and sent to non-ethnic markets where the buyer is more ‘cosmetic’ conscious.

Kinoo is a highly soft-skinned fruit. Its transport in wooden crates is much safer than cardboards — imagine the road conditions from Sargodha to Karachi! Moreover, most of our kinoo markets are highly price sensitive. If the kinoo sent in wooden crate is a cent cheaper, it will be preferred. I am a witness to this phenomenon in the Middle East. What we really need to do is to encourage the cardboard packing where possible and improve the quality of wooden crates. In either case, the process of standardization must be completed before 2005.

The STED-funded programme at the UAF has the potential to provide necessary assistance in this area. For kinoo, the botanical descriptions are available. We need to have its production programme defined and documented. That means starting from the nursery trees to the harvesting of fruit. Then, there should be a complete description of postharvest phase i.e. fruit handling at and after harvest, preparations for marketing i.e. grading standards, treatments, packing process, transportation and delivery at the destination market. Most of this chain of events is also fairly well understood which needs to be documented and implemented as ‘standards’.

The writer is professor of horticulture at the University of Agriculture, Faisalabad.