AGRICULTURE
12
ANTHONY WESTBURY
yield of other established crops like soy beans by up to a factor
of 10.
Pongamia products also could form the basis for what’s in
great demand these days, a source of affordable plant protein.
If successful, we could see pongamia used in snacks or meatless
burgers.
Peter McClure is a 28-year veteran of the citrus industry who
realized citrus was highly unlikely to ever recover. Currently he
is chief agricultural officer for TerViva’s nursery operations in St.
Lucie County, just west of Lakewood Park.
In a former citrus nursery, McClure oversees about 30 workers
who are growing selected varieties of pongamia. The tree
produces hundreds of variants in the wild and McClure’s task is to
winnow those down to 30 or 40 “selected cultivars” that show the
most commercial promise.
Actually, while the process is time-consuming, diversity in a
plant product is a desirable trait, McClure said.
“Both citrus and pongamia have been around for at least 4,000
years,” he said. “The Chinese domesticated citrus by concentrating
on just a handful of varieties. Unfortunately, the genetic narrowness
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of citrus was the reason it was wiped out by one pest.
Pongamia has tremendous genetic diversity.”
Traditionally used for lamp oil and fertilizer, pongamia has
never been used as a commercial food crop. That’s because the
tree contains bitter compounds — furano flavonoids — according
to Jim Astwood, TerViva’s senior vice president for products
and processing.
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McClure, who oversees TerViva’s St. Lucie County operations, examines a
seedling at the company’s Lakewood Park nursery.
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