More than three years ago, the silvery green leaves and orange berries of the sea buckthorn shrub were touted as “the next best thing” in the prairie fruit industry.
The hoopla has died, but the real work needed to create a viable industry carries on.
A variety of products are entering the market using the berries and the leaves. Equipment for harvesting is being developed and labs are cloning the plant to speed its growth.
Colin McLoughlin, chief executive officer of Canada’s Sea Buckthorn Enterprises, said new products, including foods and cosmetics, are entering the North American marketplace.
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McLoughlin said the orange berries can be made into a juice powder that is used for chewy bars and breakfast foods. The pulp oil can be used to make skin moisturizers.
“It’s the most multi-purpose plant in the world,” McLoughlin said.
“Even the residue is excellent for animal feed.”
However, a processing plant still hasn’t been built. One has been proposed for Wynyard, Sask., but although the building has been bought, nothing has moved forward.
“It’s been delayed from 2000 until 2001. It’s still under development,” McLoughlin said.
It will be a viable part of the industry once it opens, he added.
“We’ll be in full production by 2007 because that’s when we’ll get a full supply from orchards.”
James Donovan, an extension agrologist with Saskatchewan Agriculture, said he expects the orchards that were planted in Saskatchewan more than three years ago to produce fruit soon. It takes at least four years before the plant produces berries.
Donovan estimated that farmers in the area surrounding Yorkton, where he is based, have planted at least 20 acres of the fruit.
He said that may not sound like a lot, but if there isn’t a processing plant to move the fruit, there’s going to be a lot of sea buckthorn around.
“Sea buckthorn will be viable if there’s adequate processing capacity and marketing following that, of course,” Donovan said.
“I doubt it will ever be a total farm income, but it’ll be a supplemental income to a farming operation.”
A big challenge facing sea buckthorn growers is how to pick fruit from a plant that has thorns as sharp as nails.
The Prairie Agricultural Machinery Institute is trying to build a mechanical harvester to make the work easier.
“We started off a year ago basically saying we will look at methods of developing a harvester or do research to come up with a mechanical harvester,” said Don Petkau, manager of research and development for PAMI.
The research institute is trying to harvest the leaves and the berries.
“About the only place where they’re successfully growing the plant is China and they’re using hand labor. In Europe they’ve tried numerous things and haven’t had an awful lot of luck with the harvesting,” Petkau said.
“These berries just don’t want to come off. That’s the unique thing about them, is that you need double the force to get them as you would for a Saskatoon berry.”
The leaves, which are used for tea and other purposes, are typically harvested in July and the berries in the fall.
Petkau expects PAMI’s three-year research project to result in a process for picking berries and the basic idea for a machine.
“We don’t expect to have a machine with the bells and whistles that a farmer can buy and use. We expect to have the basic idea of it and actual prototypes.”
Researchers are also trying to solve some other production problems.
It takes at least four years for a plant to mature and produce fruit. As well, a farmer needs six or seven female plants for every male in the orchard because the males are the pollinators and the females bear the fruit.
But farmers can’t tell a plant’s gender from its seed.
Researchers are cloning varieties of sea buckthorn to develop plants of a certain gender.
“The main problem is that growing them from seed takes longer and growing them from seed, you also don’t know what the sex is. So we’re taking plants that we already know the sex of and taking cuttings and trying to get them into tissue cultures so we can propagate them,” said Paul Lummerding, lab manager for the cloning process at Prairie Plant Systems in Saskatoon.
The company is cloning varieties that have been identified as elite by the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration in Indian Head, Sask.
That means they have better berry production and growth rates.
The Indian Summer variety is an elite line but the lab has had difficulty reproducing it.
“We’re just having problems getting the tissue culture system to work for elite lines,” Lummerding said.
The company has had better luck cloning the variety Sinensis. But its berries are difficult to remove. Lummerding hopes the lab will figure out how to clone elite varieties that are in higher demand.
He said cloning won’t flood the market because the lab will only sell what the market demands.
Jack Winniski, a sea buckthorn grower since 1990, said advances in research and production will make the shrub popular.
He said his Melville, Sask., farm is one of the few orchards that are producing fruit. He sells berries, trees and rooted cuttings.
He doesn’t pick the berries until they have frozen and can be pulled more easily off the branches.
Winniski worries about delays in the Wynyard plant, but said sea buckthorn producers are making plans for processing plants in British Columbia and Newfoundland.
