PASSION FRUIT FOR AMERICA

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 252, 21 July 1936, Page 10

PASSION FRUIT FOR AMERICA

Possible Market

STILL REGARDED AS A NOVELTY The luscious passion fruit of Australia and New Zealand is much in demand among the gourmets of North America, according to Mr. G. A. Flack, governing director of Manly Vale Fruit Products Limited, of Sydney. When he arrived at Wellington yesterday after a visit to Canada and the United States, Mr. Flack stated that he considered there was a splendid potential market fop New Zealand and Australian passion fruit in those countries. Passion fruit, said Mr. Flack, was still a novelty in North America. Only a small quantity was grown in the States, and that was uncultivated. Once educated up to it, he was sure they would come to regard passion fruit as a necessary adjunct to the preparation of drinks and fancy dishes, at which the Americans were adepts. At present, however, producers attempted to better the colour and flavour by adding limes, thus killing the individuality of the fruit. They had yet to learn the proper treatment. Unfortunately tourists from the Commonwealth and the Dominion tended to spread the impression that the fruit grew in such abundance in these countries that it was only a question of harvesting it. Consequently Americans expected passion fruit to be exported to their country for next to nothing. Mr. Flack said he had been in America for the purpose of investigating the possibilities of marketing passion fruit there. At present producers were faced by a 35 per cent, import duty, but when that had been reduced or done away with, a wide market would be opened up for passion fruit growers.