Marulas: Africa’s miracle fruit

A nutritious food source, abundantly available in the drought-gripped Limpopo province and in Mpumalanga, has escaped the attention of Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.

The minister punts nutrition as the answer to the HIV/Aids pandemic and has recommended foodstuffs such as garlic, African potatoes and olive oil. Yet oil extracted from the kernels of the marula fruit and meal made from defatted kernels could prove far more valuable than olive oil in combating the HIV/Aids raging through the growing areas, say researchers at Pretoria Technikon, Rand Afrikaans University and the South African Council for Scientific Research (CSIR).

But almost the entire crop of marula fruit goes into an expensive liqueur and into cosmetics, soap, jellied preserves and packaged juice — luxuries as far beyond the pockets of the local people who most need decent nutrition as is the minister’s olive oil.

Deputy President Jacob Zuma, in a recent tour of Makopane hospital in Limpopo, said he would ask the Cabinet to consider redirecting part of the HIV/Aids budget to finance a pilot nutrition programme being run at the hospital.

‘I have not heard anything more about the deputy president’s undertaking,” said Morongwa Mohape, the hospital’s CEO.

‘We have had some spectacular improvements in all patients on the nutrition programme. Most patients are very poor and seldom get enough to eat at home. But some patients who were too ill to leave their beds are walking unaided to the bathroom, and a young girl gained 7kg in only a fortnight. This proves to me that good nutrition is essential in treating not only HIV/Aids, but tuberculosis and cancer as well.”

Marula products are not included in the nutrition programme, she said. ‘The diet is drawn up by our qualified dieticians and it includes garlic and carrots, but not marulas.”

Cas Holtzhausen, a retired Rand Afrikaans University professor who farms near Nelspruit in Mpumalanga, said: ‘I researched marulas for 20 years. The fruit is an enormously valuable food source. But commercialisation has run away from the research.

‘Companies started making various products from marulas before the research into its nutritional and possible medical properties had been completed.”

Ben Botha of the chemistry and physics department at Pretoria Technikon will soon register a patent on work he has done on marulas. ‘Marula pulp is very rich in vitamin C, three or four times richer than oranges,” said Botha.

‘The meal milled from defatted kernels compares very favourably with soya-bean meal as a good protein source. It has good amino acids, which are the building blocks of all living cells.

‘The oil extracted from the kernels is polyunsaturated and very stable — four times as stable as olive oil. This means that it does not break down into harmful compounds on being heated.

‘It is also being researched for anti-oxidant properties. Clinical tests on the oil are not yet complete, but we do know it has a completely different fatty acid from olive oil.”

He said medical research into the properties of marula fruit could follow current food-resource and industrial research.

‘This often happens, in any field of research,” he said. But ‘a long industrial process” would be needed before marula meal could be manufactured and sold as a food supplement.

‘It could start as an add-on process to the gathering of marula fruit for other products,” he said. ‘But once it became available it could greatly enhance the quality of life for the people who consume it.”

It was unlikely that any question of royalties would arise, said Botha, because the use to which the fruit was put was not ‘an indigenous practice” and was not comparable with the traditional use of marulas for beer.

The biggest commercial user of marula is Distell, which took over the manufacture of Amarula Cream liqueur when the Distillers’ Corporation merged with the Stellenbosch Farmers’ Winery, and a Distell associate, Mirma Products of Phalaborwa, which provides the fruit.

Limpopo Marula Products, an associated company that makes soap and cosmetics, as well as several independent companies in Limpopo and Mpumalanga, make preserves and packaged juices from marulas.

A tourism-oriented Distell company called Amarula Lapa is also based in Phalaborwa. Its promotions manager, Etienne Bruwer, said there was a yet-unnamed Section 21 (non-profit) company within Mirma Products ‘whose main aim is to assist the rural communities that supply the marulas”.

The company ‘supported” crèches, brick-making and wire-fence construction during the nine months of the year — April to December — when marula fruit was not available, he said. In the marula season — January to March — fruit was collected within a 500km2 area around Phala-borwa, Limpopo, as well as around Acornhoek and Thulamahashe in Mpumalanga, he said.

‘The ripe fruit falls to the ground and is hand-gathered by close on 6 000 rural women. Our trucks visit the outlying settlements to pick up the sacks of fruit. About 2 000 tons are gathered every year.

‘The fruit is washed and pulped in Phalaborwa and taken by road to Distell in Stellenbosch, where it goes through the wine-making, distillation, maturation, blending and bottling phases.”

Bruwer said that the fruit was gathered in different areas by agreement with the local chiefs, six of whom were directors of Mirma Products, including Modjadji, the rain queen. She could not be reached for comment and Bruwer refused to disclose the names of the other five chiefs.

Bruwer insisted that the chiefs were not paid for arranging the marula gathering. ‘They are directors in a non-profit-making company,” he said.

He also refused to disclose how much the women were paid for gathering the fruit, saying this varied in different areas. An official told the Mail & Guardian that a ton of fruit cost the company about R250, excluding transport and other costs. That works out at 25c a kilogram for the gatherers.

Another source said the pay averaged R20 a day. ‘The money we pay the women for gathering fruit is almost the only cash they get during the year,” Bruwer said.

‘Much of it is spent on school fees and school clothes for the children.”

What are the prospects for transforming the marula crop into a valuable, life-enhancing food instead of using it for luxuries?

The CSIR’s Ingrid Weinert researched marulas for many years before moving to corporate technology management.

‘The first problem is that nobody is sure if there would be a demand for marula food products,” she said. ‘Entrepreneurs must be found who would be willing to invest in marula orchards.

‘The orchards would tie up a lot of capital, because once they are established the trees would take five years to bear fruit.

‘I’m not saying it can’t be done. The government has realised that investment needs to be directed to add value to our resources. Commercial orchards of marulas would add value and offer employment in areas where there are huge numbers of unemployed people.

‘The whole of Africa is short of food, so commercial production of marulas could be an international project with other African countries — marulas occur as far north as southern Sudan. In five years, people could start talking about it seriously.”