Dear all,
A belated reply to Dr. Chiranjit Parmar's email of 2/17/09 regarding
apples growing in Jawa, Indonesia that might be of interest of apple
growers in temperate climates. I had the privilege of visiting this
area, Batu Malang, approximately 100 km south of Surabaya in the
eastern part of Jawa in 1991. It's a short drive out of the city of
Malang (In the Indonesian language, 'batu' means 'rock', so Batu
Malang means Malang's rock or hill. You can locate Malang on most
maps of Indonesia, but not Batu Malang because it's relatively
small). It was an amazing, eye opening experience. Batu Malang is,
or at least was in 1991, a relatively prosperous town whose economy
is largely derived from growth of apples and container nursery stock.
The area is at about 1500 metres elevation, with an idyllic climate
of daytime highs in the mid 20's and nighttime lows in the upper
teens, centigrade. It appears that the trick to getting around the
absence of winter chilling is to defoliate the trees by hand
immediately after harvest. This throws the trees into a pseudo
dormancy and new blossom buds break 6-8 weeks later. The area as a
whole produces fresh apples 12 month of the year, with individual
growers producing in Jan/Jul, Feb/ Aug, Mar/Sept, ..... The apples
are exported to major cities throughout Indonesia, not only on Jawa
but distant islands such as Sulawesi. (We lived in Manado, North
Sulawesi from Aug 90-92, and apples from Batu Malang were often
available in some of the commercial grocery stores, but not local
markets.) There were four main varieties of apples being grown at
Batu Malang, one of which was called 'Biasa', which means 'common' or
'nothing special', in the Indonesian language. It was commonly used
for cooking and I was told that it was a Red Rome, although it was a
nondescript yellowish color rather than red. Anna was another
variety grown at Batu Malang. Anna is believed to have originated in
Thailand, and is noted for having a low chilling requirement. One of
the many unanswered questions that I have regarding growing apples in
the tropics is whether the defoliation 'trick' would work with any or
most varieties, or whether the four varieties being grown at Batu
Malang are unusual in that defoliation can be substituted for winter
chilling on these varieties but perhaps not others. Certainly, high
elevation is a factor. Near Manado where my family lived in North
Sulawesi, we saw apples being grown, albeit with very limited
success, at the village of Tomohon, at an elevation of ~1200 meters.
I was also informed that apples were being grown at high elevations
on the Island of Irian Jaya, in the easternmost part of Indonesia.
Although growing apples in the tropics was a surprise to me, and
probably would be to most pomologists, it has been known long enough
that the Indonsesian Ministry of Agiculture had a published handbook
on methods of apple cultivation that I was able to obtain from the
Batu Malang Research Station in 1992. There is also a Government
Research Station at Batu Malang, with a research orchard. There I
learned that defoliation does not work on stone fruits, but is being
tried on several other temperate climate fruits.
Jim Rahe
--
Annie's Orchard
4092-248th Street
Aldergrove, B.C. V4W 1B5
604-856-3041
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