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Growing Berries in Brisbane                   query from Bernie Doran

At our last meeting, it was mentioned that Boysenberries don’t fruit up here – that they needed cooler weather. I had some a couple of years ago and got a few fruit from them. They are very hardy and still come up in the grass. What about other similar berries like Loganberries? I saw some Thornless Blackberries at the BOGI show last year; do they grow and fruit here? We get a few light frosts each year.

Replies from Members
George Allen  Warn of the possible risk of weediness. The thornless ones would always be an attractive option. Some are marginal in our climate but can still produce fruit.
Sheryl Backhouse   I put in a native Raspberry many years ago. It was a nightmare. It suckered like crazy and when the seeds blew in the wind, we had plants popping up everywhere!  It took Bob about 5 years to kill it off …. and that’s using Round-Up but we’re all different and by your replies, lots of you like growing berries! 
MaryAnn Baker We have Boysenberry, Loganberry, Thornless Blackberry, Raspberry (native and non-native), 4 types of Blueberries all doing well – no frosts here but most are planted on the south side of the shed so rarely get any sun! Raspberries and Blackberries are planted on the fenceline near the cattle paddock so they get eaten by the cows on one side and the road keeps the others in check so not sure how invasive they are – do have friends who grow them in big concrete pots as they think they will be invasive if allowed into the ground.  I also grow Tayberry and Goji  and am looking for Cossock Pineapple Ground Cherry.

Chris Bourke

Probably the majority of the berry family is out of its climatic comfort zone here. The boysenberry was grown in southern NSW where I grew up – Batlow – a cool climate apple growing region. One grower had several acres of them and I once spent my school holidays picking them – 25 pounds is what I earned as a 12 year old in 1963! 

Greg Daley – www.daleysfruit.com.au

We can grow and crop Boysenberries in Kyogle. Also the Thornless Youngberry seems to crop OK in Subtropics.  We do get frosts. I would think that the Boysenberry and Youngberry will crop in Brisbane in cooler regions or where the microclimate is shaded in winter to increase chill hours. I haven’t found them weedy in the subtropics, maybe because they are marginal in climatic requirements – probably more a problem in colder areas. The blackberry is definitely a weed issue in cooler climates. Brian Dobeli I have the Thornless Boysenberry and Youngberry and get enough fruit to make them worthwhile. I lift up new runners every now then so they don’t set roots so it’s not a weed problem at my place Richard Bull    I have a trellis of boysenberries (in flower and young fruit at present).  Our place at Tamborine Mt is 600m elevation and they fruit and grow well in our cool climate.  Paul Thorne has some at Shailer Park which is only about 150m above sea level and a lot warmer than Tamborine Mt and they do reasonably well there. Brisbane may be getting a bit warm and may be borderline – but worth a go, as the fruit are so delicious. The vines need to be trellised and tied onto horizontal wires and are extremely prickly. They sucker a lot from shallow roots, so best to plant in a bordered bed to limit where the young suckers come up. However, when about 10-15cm tall, these suckers have a good root system and can be dug up, cut from the parent root and potted or replanted.  Also, long lateral canes (up to 5m) will drop to the ground and immediately sprout roots, so keep the ends of laterals off the ground.  If you direct a lateral tip into a pot of soil it will take root and you can cut off a couple of metres of the lateral to make a really advanced vine for re-planting. I can pot up a number of suckers at present if any members would like some plants. Could bring to December meeting or for pick up if any members wish to have a nice visit to our mountain.

Mal Fairley

Atherton Raspberries and Kerryberries grow extremely well in Wamuran, near Caboolture.  Both are weedy (need regular attention).   Raspberries are grown intensively by commercial growers around me. Note we have not had a frost here in at least 8 years.

Annette McFarlane I tend not to suggest any cane berries to gardeners because they are so vigorous and hard to control. I have had both raspberries and blackberries fruit here, but not as prolifically as they do at higher altitudes or further south.

Anne Osbourne I have Youngberries fruit here, they are fruiting at the moment. Youngberry is a hybrid between three different species from the genus Rubus, the raspberries, blackberries, and dewberries of the rose family. I have also had Loganberries fruit here. Loganberries are a hexaploid hybrid produced from pollination of a plant of the octaploid Blackberry cultivar ‘Aughinbaugh’ by a diploid red raspberry. Bosenberries are a cross between the European Raspberry, a European blackberry, an American dewberry and the Loganberry. So it is possible that Boysenberries will also fruit here. It can get down to as low 5°C on occasion but rarely freezes.

Raewyn Roach

We’ve been growing the Tropical Raspberry very successfully at Noosa for many years but they don’t like Cherry Tomatoes growing anywhere near them!  You can either trellis them or grow them nine canes to the square metre.

Matthew Synnott

I grew a Kerriberry very well but eventually lost it – it had very nice tasting fruit.  Looks like they are available from Daleys.

Graham Yeoman of Tallegalla Fruit Tree Nursery  –  www.tallegallafruittrees.com.au

In reference to your inquiry on berries, we have had Boysenberries growing and fruiting at our property here at Tallegalla, however, they are very prickly to handle and I was always concerned about them becoming a garden escapee if they were not maintained.  For this reason we no longer keep them in stock.   I would recommend your member look at either the Thornless Youngberry or Loganberry as an alternative fruit as to me they taste very similar and are far easier to handle and maintain.  As with any of the berries in this group, they are a bramble and will root down and spread very easily which can add to the weed potential if bushes are not maintained properly. We currently have a limited number of both Youngberry and Loganberry in stock if you need them.

Ramm Botanicals propagate by tissue culture – Rubus fruticosus x R. alleghaniensis (sub-genus Eubatus) ‘Thornless Blackberry’. This hybrid Blackberry bears richly flavoured fruit from mid-to-late summer. Add these healthy berries to fruit salad, your morning smoothie, Greek yoghurt or top your pancakes with them for a burst of flavour. Derived from high health, tissue cultured stock. Height to 2m. Width to 4m. Prefers well drained, slightly acidic, compost-rich soil and full sun position. Keep soil moist whilst plant is establishing and keep it mulched. Remove old canes in winter. Harvest when berries are ripe as they won’t ripen off the vine. Freeze or use immediately. Feed with a controlled release fertiliser in early spring. Self fertile. Train onto wires or a trellis. Still bears some thorns. Note: this hybrid is not considered invasive. (ref: www.ramm.com.au)

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Must We Eliminate Sodium from our Diets? I very much fear that the current eat-no-salt recommendations will induce lots of guilt but have very little effect on heart disease and stroke. (Did eat-no-fat succeed in preventing obesity?) Salt-fear, resulting in maternal iodine deficiency, is already putting newborn New Zealand babies at risk of permanent brain damage. Nutrition is a complex problem not aided by simple-minded formulas and knee-jerk mental attitudes. There is enormous evidence that by eating more potassium than sodium, most if not all of the damage from salt (sodium) can be prevented. (Excess sodium not affects not only blood pressure but also bone loss.) The evidence includes both short-term studies where potassium supplements were given for a month or so, and long-term studies where lifetime diets of hundreds of thousands of people were matched with their deaths from heart disease, stroke, and other causes. Consistently, high potassium intake was found to reduce or eliminate sodium damage. This evidence has been available for years, published in reputable peer-reviewed journals and summarised by such agencies as the US Center for Disease Control and the American Heart Association. Yet I have never seen any publicity that emphasizes the logic of eating high-potassium foods such as potatoes, silver beet, oranges, bananas, and sweet corn. The publicity machine has locked itself into a rigid anti-salt mode. After all, why give consumers the good news about potassium, when it’s much more rewarding to make us guilt-ridden for not overriding our inbuilt biological urge to eat salty foods. As a simple target, we should aim for twice as much potassium as sodium. For instance, 100 g of McDonald’s much-maligned chips contains 576 mg potassium and 233 mg sodium, a K:Na ratio of 2.5. For athletic young men who will burn off any excess fat from these chips, they are a healthy food! (People with kidney disease have to avoid potassium. That is not the case for most of us.) If you try to buy groceries with high levels of potassium, you will be dismayed at how many food manufacturers do not list the levels of this important nutrient. So much for any claims that they are genuinely concerned with our health!

Sheryl: Jay Mann is a professional plant biochemist. Since his retirement from Crop and Food CRI in 1993, he has been a consultant, preparing reviews on topics as diverse as ways to lower blood cholesterol, feedstuff composition, chicken flavour, and industrial use of enzymes. Food for people has been a lifelong interest. I met Jay many years ago when he was a speaker at a Skeptics Conference I was attending. He has written a book called “How to Poison your Spouse the Natural Way – A Kiwi Guide to Safer Food” Website: http://www.saferfoods.co.nz/ We called in to see him on our recent visit to NZ. 

Book Review from the web: One of the great myths of alternative medicine and the health food industry is that natural things are better than artificial or synthetic things because natural is natural and Mother Nature wouldn’t want to hurt us. Wouldn’t she just? Plants and animals have had many millions of years to evolve ways of protecting themselves against predators and competitors for resources. Humans have had about 100,000 years of hunting and gathering to evolve natural resistance and about 10,000 years of agriculture to breed out the nastiness, and these times are just not long enough to make much difference. We are surrounded by plants and animals which can do us great harm if we are not careful about what we eat, and also by a myriad of fungi which delight in making safe foods unsafe. The book is divided into three sections – “Dangers we should worry about but don’t”, “Things we worry about but need not”, and “Things we ought to know”. The first section is about the dangers out there which are often ignored because “natural is safe” or simply because people don’t know any better. Some of the warnings are well recognised, such as the dangers of rhubarb leaves and anything to do with oleander plants. Others, such as the dangers of moulds, are often ignored because they are secondary to the main event. An example would be a herbal medicine which is harmless if the herbs are kept dry but which can become deadly if it becomes mouldy through bad handling or storage. If you want to be really scared, think about saxitoxin and tetrodotoxin in seafood which can paralyse someone to the point where bystanders think that they are dead but which leave the victim fully conscious and aware of what is happening. This is the stuff of horror movies. The second section deals with irrational fears about chemicals. Much of the hysteria about genetically-modified foods, additives, preservatives and other ways man interferes with nature is based on ignorance or fear of the unknown. This is not to say that we should not be careful, but if you are eating in an Asian restaurant you probably should be more worried about zearalenone in the corn and chicken soup or aflatoxin in the sate than about the MSG in the sweet and sour sauce. The third section of the book gives a good explanation of how to interpret research and statistics, as well as some good advice about exercise. Some of this book will make you think very carefully about what you put into your mouth and some of it will reassure you, but I recommend it to anyone who wants to find out the reality of food dangers and safety.

Sheryl:  Jay passed away in 2019.

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Although there are several coffee species, most coffee is made from the seed or bean of either Coffea arabica (Arabica coffee) or Coffea canephora (Robusta coffee). Arabica trees normally produce berries 8 to 15 mm in diameter, and Robusta produces berries approximately 10 mm in diameter. Commercially, Robusta is regarded as inferior to Arabica coffee and is used mainly as a filler in instant coffee blends. Coffee berries are picked when they ripen to a bright deep red colour although there are a few cultivars which ripen to a deep yellow colour. The coffee or ‘green bean’ lies within the fruit and is surrounded by the parchment membrane, pulp or mucilage and outer skin. Coffee processing in the home is very time consuming. Small scale processing equipment is now available in Australia. Equipment is also available from the United Kingdom, at considerable expense. Processing involves six main steps:
Pulping  This step involves removing the skin and pulp, and should be carried out as soon as possible after harvesting, certainly within 24 hours. It is necessary to remove all green unripe, and black overripe dry berries, before pulping as these will reduce the quality of the coffee. Two home methods can be used for pulping. One is to squeeze each individual berry by hand, and the other is to use a piece of wood to tamp the berries in a bucket until all seeds have been forced out from the skin. After this operation fill the bucket with water and stir the skins and seeds. Pour away the skins before they settle. Repeat this process to remove all the skins and pulp and any coffee beans that float. Good coffee beans will not float in water. Remove by hand any remaining skins or un-pulped coffee berries.

Fermentation
Fermentation by natural enzymes breaks down the insoluble mucilage around the parchment layer, that is, the slippery layer you can feel with your fingers. Place the coffee beans in a plastic bucket to avoid the effects iron has on quality and add water to the beans. Fermentation may be complete in 18 to 48 hours, depending on the surrounding temperature. To check whether the fermentation phase is complete, gently wash a handful of the beans. If they come clean and feel gritty (not slippery), then adequate fermentation has been achieved and the beans can be washed. Wash in agitated water and drain. Repeat this process until the water becomes clear. This normally takes approximately three washes. To strain off the water, use a colander or some fine, net-like material such as an onion bag, as this will prevent the loss of beans. During the washing process any floating beans should be discarded.

Drying
Coffee beans must be dried before the parchment can be removed and beans roasted. The simplest method of drying is sun drying. Avoid very intense sunlight when the coffee is wet as the beans may split. Physical aids such as wire drying racks or other fine mesh supports allow for the flow of air and enhance drying. The beans should be spread out in a thin layer no more than 3 cm thick, stirred three times a day, and be protected from rainy weather. Drying in this way can take from 5 to 30 days, depending on the seasonal weather pattern. Alternatively, a home food dehydrator can be used. This equipment uses electric heating elements to control drying. Only dehydrators with variable temperature controls are suitable as drying temperature must be kept at 40oc for the entire drying period. As with sun drying, beans must be stirred three times a day. Drying in this manner can be completed in several days and there is no risk of the beans being harmed by the weather. Whichever method of drying is used, the parchment on the coffee bean will dry to a pale straw colour, and be brittle to touch. At this stage, test the dryness of the beans by removing the parchment by hand off several coffee beans; if dry the bean inside should be greyish blue in colour, hard, likely to break when bitten between the teeth, and not soft and chewy. If soft, continue the drying process. Inadequate drying, that is, greater than 12% moisture, will cause mouldiness and stale aroma during storage. After correct drying, store for at least a fortnight in cans, jars or heavy gauze bags. This is to allow moisture to distribute evenly throughout the coffee beans. For longer term storage before parchment removal, air tight containers are recommended.

Parchment removal (Hulling)
Before roasting, the thin tough parchment layer must be removed from the beans. Place the beans, a small quantity at a time, in a food processor or similar type of blender. Plastic blades should be used to avoid breaking the coffee beans. Blend at low speed for approximately 30 seconds to remove the parchment from the beans. Then use a hair dryer or similar piece of equipment to blow away the unwanted lighter parchment from the beans. The very thin membrane which may remain on the green bean is the silver skin. It is not considered necessary to remove this before, or after, roasting. However, it may detract from the visual appearance of the roasted beans and can be removed by gently rubbing the beans following roasting. At this stage the coffee can be stored in sealed jars for roasting as required.

Roasting
The green coffee beans must be roasted to develop the typical coffee aroma and flavour. During roasting, several changes occur to the beans. These include loss of moisture, caramelisation of sugars, change in colour and increase in size. Roast the beans in large baking dishes in the oven. Spread the beans thinly and stir frequently to prevent burning and to give an even roast. As a rough guide, a single layer of beans will roast in 12 minutes at 230-250oC, while beans at a depth of 25 mm may take 30 minutes at this temperature. After the coffee has been roasting for a short time, the colour of the beans changes to a yellowish brown which gradually deepens in colour as they cook. As the beans are heated they shrivel until half cooked, then swell, and begin to open out as they increase in size. The colour and flavour of the beans will be influenced by the length of roasting, for example, light brown beans (a light roast) will have a weaker flavour than brown/black beans (a dark roast). The extent to which you will roast the beans depends upon individual flavour preferences. Over-roasting gives a burnt flavour. Adequately roasted beans should crack easily between the fingers. Once roasted, remove the beans from the oven, spread thinly and cool as quickly as possible with a fan, or the beans will continue to cook from their own heat. Roasting can also be carried out in a fry pan or using a popcorn machine.

Grinding, storage and brewing  
The cooled coffee beans may then be ground in a blender to the desired extent. This is determined by the type of brewing extraction to be used. The finer the grind the greater the extraction of the flavour when the coffee is brewed. For example:

Expresso – very fine Percolator – fine Filter coffee (dripolator) – fine to medium

Pot infusion (plunger) – medium to coarse

Ground coffee goes stale rapidly and loses flavour probably due to oxidation of certain oils. Packaging ground coffee in air tight containers and holding in the refrigerator will help to reduce flavour loss. However, the best quality brew is obtained when using freshly ground beans. It is recommended to store roasted beans in an air tight container in the refrigerator and grind the required amount just before use. The most important aspect of brewing is not to let coffee stand once brewing is complete. Over brewing destroys the flavour. The water need not be boiling, but just off the boil. When using plunger coffee makers (pot infusion), brew coffee for 3 to 5 minutes before drinking. Coffee made by filtration using dripolators should be served once the cycle is complete. Residual coffee should not be left sitting on the hot plate as over brewing will result and destroy the best flavour. Percolators by design tend to over brew coffee. Individual taste preferences may influence your selection of brewing method as well as roasting criteria.

Information contained in this publication is provided as general advice only. For application to specific circumstances, professional advice should be sought. The Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries, Queensland has taken all reasonable steps to ensure the information in this publication is accurate at the time of publication. Readers should ensure that they make appropriate inquiries to determine whether new information is available on the particular subject matter.    February 2004

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Sugar-free Desserts contributed by Diane Moscheller from various authors over many years

Froyo
Combine 4 cups Greek yogurt, 1 cup frozen fruit of choice, 1 tab of honey. Push through a sieve to avoid icy chunks. Mix in food processor til well blended. Freeze a few hours. Ready to scoop!

Strawberry Icecream
500g strawberries, 2 medium bananas, 1 avocado, ¼ cup honey, ½ cup orange juice or 2 tabs tahina (for a creamier texture) Blend high speed. Pour into a container and freeze.

Vanilla Ice cream
4 small bananas, peeled, chopped and frozen, ½ cup soy or thick nut milk, 1 tspn vanilla, 1 tab tahina, ½-1 tab honey. Blend and freeze.

Banana and Caramel Ice cream
8 very ripe bananas (1.3g) Peel, thin slice. Freeze at least 6 hours. Remove from freezer, rest 5 mins. Place in food processor til smooth. At this point add 12 Medjool dates – pits removed.

Cashew Cream 1 cup cashews (best activated overnight in water in frig), ½ cup of water or orange juice, 1-2 tspns honey

Blend nuts and liquid as finely as possible. Add a little honey and nutmeg. Use as a topping for fruit.

Strawberry Jelly Soak 2 tabs agar flakes (from sea vegetables no sulphide) overnight in 1 cup of water or a minimum of 2 hours. Heat agar til boiling and simmer til flakes dissolve. Blend 500gms strawberries, 1 cup fresh apple juice, ¼-½ cup honey.

Combine strawberry mixture with agar and blend briefly. Pour into a mould and refrigerate til set.

Tofu Lemon Cream 400g tofu, ½ cup lemon juice, grated rind of two lemons, maple syrup to taste. Blend well & refrigerate. Note: You can omit the honey/ maple syrup in all these recipes. For a sugar replacement flavour cinnamon is ideal.

As these are all fresh they only have a limited shelf life so make and enjoy within days.

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My first and second attempts at a worm farm ended in disaster. After these failed attempts I was given instructions by a man who has worm farms as big as many people’s houses and I wondered how his information could translate to someone like me with one of those tiered black plastic contraptions. However, I did as he told me and though it doesn’t sound like much of a departure from what I’d already tried, it has really worked.

To begin with, all food scraps are wrapped in newspaper; he calls them “subs” and I make them long and slimish with two thicknesses of paper. He also told me to avoid too much citrus and egg shells – in fact he told me to avoid these altogether, but I couldn’t help myself.  He said to discard all the plastic tray tiers except one and to continue with this until the layer was filled (which took ages) and then I could add another tier. The subs are placed on one side of the tray along with horse manure – the quality of this is most important as the donors must not have been fed anti-biotics as it kills the worms stone dead.  My new worms were placed on the other side of the tray in a bit of the compost they’d been living in. The theory is that the worms know when the contents of the subs have decomposed to an acceptable state and then they crawl over and get stuck into it. The only other care I provided was to pour water over the top of the subs and the worms and kept the worm farm in a cool place (near my tank-stand actually in the shade) as worms cannot tolerate heat.  Make sure you leave the tap on “open” and provide a decent sized bucket at the bottom to catch the worm juice. I pour this over the subs each week adding extra water if I want more juice.

I use the juice diluted at the rate of one cup added to 2 litres of water for my African Violets, or anything else that is lucky enough. It has no odour.

I may add that I used to crumble the horse manure but have found that this is unnecessary as the worms are quite capable of dealing with the job and I just put it in, in chunks. Mind you, horse chunks are much smaller than cow chunks.

I don’t have a clue what sort of worms I have but I’m very happy to give anyone who is interested a little supply to get them started as they have been very, very easy worms to deal with. I live at Windsor and please bring an ice-cream bucket with holes in the lid with you. I have only one worm-farm but now all tiers of my farm are occupied though the farm didn’t bulk up until I started adding shredded paper. If you don’t want it to be a big job and just keep worms for the fun of it and to give you a use for your scraps and use the worm juice, I would suggest that you don’t bother about the shredded paper. Another tip he gave me is for catching the worms (if this proves a problem, which it doesn’t seem to be for me), and he said to get some well rotted potato peelings and put them on the top of the farm. He said the worms absolutely rush to the peelings, form a worm knot and you can just pick the whole lot up easily.

Very easy little project and it is fun making subs and fun going down and lifting up a sub in the farm and see the tenants wriggling away in and under the little parcels.

Note from Sheryl:

If you don’t have a worm farm and don’t wish to expend money on one, I have just been reading an article in Grass Roots magazine – issue No. 183 where they use two of those 10 ltr white buckets that deli’s use that yoghurt comes in – lots of holes were drilled in the bottom of one and gauze placed over it to let the juice through. Follows Jennifer’s recipe of wrapping kitchen scraps in paper.

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Here goes….mind you I am not an expert, just an informed amateur.

Green bean can be kept with little trouble or preparation for years. In fact, the green bean, like wine, changes with age and becomes more complex as it ages! This is not the case for roasted beans. Whole roasted beans will deteriorate noticeably within two weeks irrespective of how they are stored. There is much debate over how to store roasted beans: we don’t, so we don’t have a storage problem. Ground roasted beans will start to deteriorate noticeably within a day! In days gone by, every country house would roast their own beans on a daily basis with small hand cranked wood fired roasters. Small urban roasters operated in urban areas to service neighbourhoods. It was only for the second world war that mass produced instant coffee was prepared

to keep the troops happy. This led to the decline in the standard of coffee as a drink overall.

There is a whole story in itself on the roasting side of the preparation. First crack, second crack and where to stop the roast. Cinnamon, City or Viennese are the names of these roasts. Then there is blending or not, and the differences in taste between the beans themselves….perhaps not this article. We roast our own with a lovely machine that allows you to see the beans darkening and to hear the cracks of the beans to determine the stage of roast. Lots of fun and you can experiment and blend and vary the roasts and get very technical and

really impress your guests as you demonstrate the “art” of roasting. It certainly is a talking point.

Once roasted we tip the beans into our grinder and only grind as we need to. The grinder has a hopper on top and a “dosser” to drop a measured amount into the cup/strainer in the handle of the group head (the heated mass of metal that the handle attaches to). At this stage the important issue is to get a consistent measure of coffee into the cup/strainer so that the rate at which heated water (at 95 degrees C) passes through the group head is perfect. The resistance to the pressure of the water should be such that in less than 30 seconds you get 30ml of expressed coffee. Sounds easy you say…..well it can be once everything is set up, here are some of the things that affect the porosity of the ground coffee: the bean type, roast, grind fineness, moisture content of the ground coffee, amount of ground coffee in the cup/strainer, the pressure at which the coffee is pressed into the cup/strainer, the pressure of the heated water that passes through the handle, the type of strainer etc. The main aim is consistency so you should try to keep as much constant as possible and vary just a few of the variables so that you get a consistent 30ml in 30 seconds. We adjust the fineness of the grind (easily adjusted on a good grinder) and keep everything else constant, that is until we decide I want to try some different roasts. We stopped using a double spout handle because it was so different to the single spout handle (quantity of coffee in the cup/strainer and the resistance of the sieve itself) that we needed two different grind sizes….a

pity but we get consistent coffee doing it the way we do.

Finally, the milk should be heated to no more than 60 degrees otherwise it gets scalded and it tastes well …scalded. We use a thermometer, but at a pinch we could use our finger on the metal jug as we heat it up.

Thermometers are cheap and easy to use.

We have invested in a manual coffee espresso machine that is robust, does NOT use a thermo block heating element and has a good steam and separate hot water (95 degrees ) outlet for tea or heating our cups. From our research and experience, fully automatic machines are a good way to show off to your friends that you have no

idea about good coffee; manual machines are the way to go.

We love our coffee. We grow it, pick it, pulp it, dry it, hull it, roast it, grind it, express it and finally drink it. It is a journey and like all good journeys it is about the experience, but after all this experience it is nice to

relax with a great coffee.

Sheryl: I was recently visiting Peter and Ann and got to taste their home made coffee. There is a difference – a huge difference so give some serious thought to giving the process a go.

Peter makes the best coffee I have ever tasted so I asked him to write something up for us.

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Plant breeder’s rights (PBR) are a form of intellectual property for protection of new plant varieties.  Protection is not automatic; in order to obtain protection of a plant variety it is necessary to register the variety with the PBR Office.  The registration process can take 2-3 years and goes beyond the scope of this article, however, I would be happy to discuss it with any interested members of the Sub-Tropical Fruit Club of Qld. Inc. (STFCQI).

Over the past year there have been concerns expressed during meetings of the STFCQI that PBR have a negative impact on the activities of members.  At the outset, I stress that this is an urban myth, and the purpose of this article is to provide general information about PBR so that members can see that it should not impinge on their activities and that there may in fact be some members who could utilise the scheme.

The aim of PBR is to encourage the development of new varieties of plants for Australia’s domestic industries and for export.  PBR are intended to provide a balance between providing plant breeders with an opportunity to obtain a reward for producing a new plant variety, and providing the benefits to growers and society through access to new and improved plant varieties.

Protection can be obtained for all species including fungi and algae, but to be eligible for protection, the variety must satisfy a number of criteria relating to characteristics and suitability for propagation: • have a breeder (that is, it cannot be a naturally occurring variety) • distinctiveness (the variety must be clearly distinguishable from other known varieties) • uniformity (with respect to the relevant characteristics which make it a distinguishable variety – limited variation is allowable, there does not have to be total or absolute uniformity) • stability (relevant characteristics remain unchanged after repeated propagation)

• the variety must not have been exploited (in the commercial sense), or exploited only recently (specific time periods apply dependent on the species)

The maximum duration of PBR is 20 years (25 years for trees and vines), subject to payment of an annual fee.  Once the PBR has expired (at the end of the 20 or 25 year term, or if the annual fee has not been paid), the variety can be freely used by the public.

PBR provides the breeder with the right to exclude others from using the propagating material (including seed, cuttings, grafting stock) of a registered variety for a range of commercial activities (including production, reproduction, sale, import, export) and from misusing the variety name.  In other words, all propagating material is protected under PBR, not just the plant itself.

However, importantly for STFCQI members there are exemptions to the protection afforded a breeder.  Specifically, protected varieties can be used without permission of the PBR owner where that use is: (a) private; (b) for non-commercial purposes; (c) for experimentation; or (d) as a starting point to breed other varieties.

For example, if you were to purchase a fruit protected by PBR from your local green-grocer, you could save any seeds, plant them and produce a tree for your own private, non-commercial use.  However, you could not sell the seeds, the tree or any propagating material.

Some members may also be pleased to know that propagating material harvested from a legitimately obtained protected plant variety can be saved for further plantings (farm-saved seed exemption).  However the harvested material from such further plantings cannot be sold commercially. Thus, PBR should not be seen as inhibiting the activities of STFCQI members, particularly those members not engaged in commercial activities relating to propagation of plants.  For those members who are engaged in commercial activities relating to propagating plants, consider embracing the PBR system, it may work to your advantage!

(Bernadette, a STFCQI member, is a Patent Attorney and keen fruit devourer – Russell)
 

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Disclaimer

The information contained in this website is for general information purposes only. The information is provided by the Sub-Tropical Fruit Club of Qld Inc. and while we endeavour to keep the information up to date and correct, we make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to the website or the information, products, services, or related graphics contained on the website for any purpose. Any reliance you place on such information is therefore strictly at your own risk.

In no event will we be liable for any loss or damage including without limitation, indirect or consequential loss or damage, or any loss or damage whatsoever arising from loss of data or profits arising out of, or in connection with, the use of this website.

Through this website you are able to link to other websites which are not under the control of the Sub-Tropical Fruit Club of Qld Inc. We have no control over the nature, content and availability of those sites. The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.

Every effort is made to keep the website up and running smoothly. However, the Sub-Tropical Fruit Club of Qld Inc. takes no responsibility for, and will not be liable for, the website being temporarily unavailable due to technical issues irrespective of the reason.