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  • From: mIEKAL aND <qazingulaza@gmail.com>
  • To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [NAFEX] The Taming of the Dika: West Africa’s Most Eligible Wild Tree
  • Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2010 14:26:51 -0500

The Taming of the Dika: West Africa’s Most Eligible Wild Tree

http://blogs.alternet.org/daniellenierenberg/2010/10/18/the-taming-of-the-dika-west-africa’s-most-eligible-wild-tree/

When forests are cleared in West Africa for firewood or for farmland,
the Dika trees are, more often than not, left untouched. Farmers have
too much to gain from harvesting the tree’s fruits and seeds to burn
or discard a Dika found in the wild.

Indigenous to West Africa, a Dika tree can grow to be as tall as 40
meters and produces a small green and yellow fruit that looks, at
first glance, like a small mango.

Its fruit ranges in taste from sweet to bitter and can be
enjoyed—especially the sweeter varieties—fresh off the tree, or made
into jelly, jam or “African-mango juice.”

But while the fruit is a delicious treat, the seeds are where the real
value can be found. Resembling smooth walnuts, Dika seeds are cracked
open by harvesters to collect the edible kernel contained inside.
These kernals can be eaten raw or roasted, but most are processed and
pounded into Dika butter or compacted into bars or pressed to produce
a cooking oil.

The seeds also produce a unique flavor when crushed and are combined
with the other spices to make “ogbono soup,” a common dish. The wide
popularity of ogbono soup has created a large market for Dika seeds
and harvesters can trade Dika kernals at both the local and regional
scale. Out of season, Dika seeds bring in an especially high price—it
has been estimated that a farmer can make up to $USD300.00 off of the
seeds produced by just one tree.

Each year, thousands of tons of “Dika nuts” are harvested throughout
Western Africa and the popularity of this wild tree has lead to many
attempts at commercial cultivation. The Dika is a slow maturing
plant—it takes 10 to 15 years for a tree to begin bearing fruit.
Breeders, motivated by the value of its fruit, are working on
developing faster growing varieties as well as varieties with shells
that are easier to crack open.

But whether or not the Dika is successfully tamed by breeders and made
more commercially viable as a domestic crop, the tree in the wild is
already providing a critical income to millions of farmers and
harvesters throughout West Africa.



  • [NAFEX] The Taming of the Dika: West Africa’s Most Eligible Wild Tree, mIEKAL aND, 10/20/2010

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