New Zealand Tree Crops Association

Waikato Thames Coromandel Branch

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- a July 2003 Branch Event -

Chestnuts in Vietnam: Part 2

by Dr David Klinac

Chestnuts in Vietnam have already been the subject of one article in an earlier "Chestnutz News", where NZCC was asked to advise the province of Cao Bang on the prospects of developing a chestnut industry in a rather remote, mountainous area on the northern Vietnamese/Chinese border.

(sorry, no ALTs - text is fairly indicative of photo content...)
 
The outcome of that first trip, 2 years ago, was that prospects looked very good. The chestnut trees already grown there produced a good quality nut that sold exceptionally well (at prices even NZ growers would envy!); demand was high; labour costs were low; and local chestnut growers could well consider themselves among the "richer" farmers in the region.

On the minus side however: conditions were fairly basic; infrastructure was limited; access in and out of the province was poor; the general standard of tree health and care was not especially high; and chestnuts had to "compete" for resources against higher priority crops such as rice. Rice took up all the better flat land, and chestnut harvest demands often clashed with the more important rice harvest. Water buffaloes roamed freely amongst the rest (eating chestnuts and trees alike) and most harvest labour was provided by children: not a problem in itself (cheap to run and good at tree climbing) but with a pronounced tendency to knock off burrs and nuts before they were really ready. Any coolstorage space available tended to be monopolised by more important "cold beer" requirements, and so fresh nut shelf-life/storage life tended to be very short. Grading and sorting was fairly rudimentary, and processing non-existent.

 
The Vietnamese Government had recognised the crop's potential, however, and was actively supporting much-expanded plantings (an extra 3000 trees in 3 years). The bottleneck was, of course, then finding sufficient quantities of good quality trees and good land to put them on. They'd tried cheap and nasty seedlings on cheap and nasty land before, and got badly burned. The emphasis this time was on quality, and NZCC was again asked to come and help: this time to demonstrate good nursery practice and help in site selection.

The project was jointly funded by the EU and the NZ Department of Foreign Affairs, allowing for both John Lelieveld (see elsewhere in the newsletter) and myself to visit and hold a series of fieldays, demonstrations and grower seminars throughout the region. These were a big hit. Johns height (2m+) and my advanced age (at least 70+, with beard) were added drawcards.

 
Standard Vietnamese nursery practice was to sow seed, densely, in raised beds, immediately after harvest (no stratification in a coolstore here) and then bud or graft as soon as they were big enough in the Spring. Very fast and very successful. What usually let them down, however, was in their subsequent budding and grafting technique. This was mainly due to the simplest of all reasons: poor availability of good secateurs, grafting knives, grafting tape etc. The biggest hit of the whole trip was Johns pruning saw. Most local cutting and chopping was done with axes or machetes (resulting both in poor tree pruning and nursery management). With a proper pruning saw they were now able to confidently tackle topworking, stub removal, remedial tree pruning and a whole range of similar jobs which would previously have resulted in more harm being done than good. John may have actually created a monster here. Normal tree pruning , before his arrival, was pretty much non-existent: resulting in many multi-stem, glorified chestnut "bushes", looking more like an NZ hazelnut or even a feijoa. Once they got his pruning saw though, some of those same trees were rapidly pruned to within an inch of their life, with John having to sometimes step in and "rescue" them from further care and attention.

Intercropping with vegetables was common, as was the growing of chestnuts on terraced slopes. One of the best performing "orchards" seen was a small, steep, conical hill, (with panoramic views across the Chinese border), heavily terraced and covered with chestnut trees. It was also heavily fortified, with several rows of army-style trenches and the remains of a bunker on top. (I told you chestnuts were a valuable cash crop, worth protecting).

 
Chestnut orchards, in the NZ sense of nicely laid out rows and blocks on flat land, didn't really exist. Instead, there were many small chestnut groves, single rows or even single trees scattered throughout the village communities. Most were simply seedlings, the best of which had been selected and marked as mother trees for future scionwood collection. There were many older trees, which had been good in their prime, but were now old and tired and badly in need of fertiliser and/or Johns pruning saw.
Good trees, though, were excellent: producing high quality, easi-peel, beautiful tasting nuts that I wish grew in NZ.

We took along a range of NZ processed products (mostly from the Kiwi Chestnut Cooperative Company of NZ) for the local growers to sample. Any sort of processed chestnut product was a novelty there (except chestnut beer and spirits), and it was interesting to hear their comments. In a part of the world heavily deficient in junk-food and lollies, it was the bitter, sour and plainer flavours that appealed most. Some of the other products (the ones most Nzers would like, I think) came across as simply too sweet. Chocolate was a big hit though, whether it had chestnut in or not. Bring more please.

 
The other new "discoveries" for them were rootstock incompatibility and the oddities of chestnut pollination. Incompatibility had never been a problem when all they grew was seedlings, but with the recent shift to budded and grafted plants, this was becoming a major concern and they were very interested to learn more. Similarly, pollination had never been something they'd thought twice about before, but now even a cursory glance at the orchard floor showed a lot of unpollinated "pennies" amongst the leavings. The thought that maybe they were missing out on potential yield really attracted their attention.

We took soil samples while we were over there, and these were then analysed by Roger Hill Labs, here in NZ. We were looking for anything that might explain why chestnuts grow well in that one province (Cao Bang), compared to both the rest of Vietnam, and with China just across the border. We didn't find it.

We did find a very unusual (to me at least) hazelnut tree. It was as high and straight as a tall pine tree (great for timber) and produced a great crop of tiny hazelnuts, with papershells that you could rub off between your fingers. The nuts were collected and sold, but the price was low and the trees themselves were scattered through the forest, rather than growing in orchards. Could we cross it with a NZ hazelnut, perhaps? [are these Gevuinas - Ed]

There were many other "unknown" NZ crops that I think would grow well there and which I tried to popularise while I was there: feijoas in particular. I think there's a range of NZ Tree Crops Association-style crops that would be excellent in Cao Bang: either interplanted with the chestnuts or as cash crops in their own right. This is an area of interest we'll try to develop further.

 
Leaving chestnuts behind, and switching to tourist-related activities, there was certainly no shortage of entertainment during our stay. I had a lot of fun watching John watching the oncoming traffic, especially when it was (often) on the wrong side of the road coming around blind corners on a muddy road on the edge of a gorge. John, being so tall, always had to sit in front, to get enough leg room, and so had much closer contact with indigenous driving habits throughout our stay than I did, safely distanced from it all in the back. Because of our excessive Western weight, our driver also insisted we always sit on opposite sides of the 4WD to stop it rolling on corners.

Lots of fresh produce for sale in the markets, of course, and no problems with drive-in fast food: just pull up on your motorbike and buy it then and there, without getting off the seat or stopping the engine, or even getting out of the way of the truck right behind you. Crossing the roads was still the worst though. You just step straight out into traffic and it's the responsibility of all the cars, trucks and bikes to avoid hitting you, rather than vice versa. It really works! Food, shopping and accomodation is great, and cheap. The scenery is beautiful and the people are really friendly. Literacy is 100% and English is being spoken more and more, everywhere. And we got back to NZ just BEFORE the SARS scare.

David Klinac

Thanks are due to David, John Free and Maurice Denton for arranging access to this information.

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Created: 2003 July 1 - Modified: 2008 July 11