----- Original Message -----
        From: Roland BOURDEIX <mailto:Roland.BOURD...@cefe.cnrs.fr>  
        To: coconut@googlegroups.com
        Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2007 3:37 PM
        Subject: About Macapuno

        Dear Colleagues,

        We will publish next month, in the International Journal of Islands  Affairs, a paper untitled "Islets Save Coconuts: from an old Polynesian practice to the new concept of a crop gene bank located on smallest islands", by Bourdeix , T. Bambridge and S. Larrue,.

        In this paper there is a chapter about Macapuno Island, and the recent discovery of a new macapuno variety able to germinate. I tried a few monthes ago to discuss this point in this forum, but up to now I did not have any reply from the Macapuno specialists.

         So, hereunder is the text I plan to include in this paper. Could you give me your opinion about it ?

        Kind regards,

        Roland Bourdeix

        Text from the paper:

        Philippines, Thailand and Makapuno Coconuts

        This will be our last love story between the coconut palm and a small island, but it is so nice that it would be a pitty not to tell it. There is an economically important coconut variety in the Philippines, which is called Makapuno. Instead of coconut water, the nut contains a soft, white jelly-like mass which is considered a delicacy. Makapuno is preserved in heavy sugar syrup and bottled for local consumption and export. Only in the Philippines, the domestic market needs 4 million kg of the highly-priced Makapuno meat annually. The sad fact is, less than 3% of that demand is being met. Makapuno coconuts are sold 30 pesos (0.65 USD) when normal coconut are priced 3 to 6 pesos only.

        Growing Makapuno is unlike growing ordinary coconut trees. In each coconut bunch produced by such a palm, 15 to 20 % of the fruits only are Makapuno, the remaining are normal coconuts. Makapuno coconuts do not germinate because the abnormal jelly-like kernel do not support the growth and development of the embryo (Mujer et al., 1984). So the only way to reproduce a Makapuno coconut was to make germinate a normal coconut from a Makapuno palm ; and not all these germinated coconut will give Makapuno palms.

        Then comes the coconut embryo culture technology. In the 1960s, Dr. Emerita de Guzman  rescued the embryo from the non-germinating Makapuno coconuts. The resulting gave palm producing up to 100% Makapuno nuts (De Guzman & del Rosario, 1974; Cedo et al., 1984). Nowadays, in various locations in the Philippines, 9 laboratories are producing embryo cultured Makapuno coconuts for sale. But the price of a Makapuno seedling coming from vitroculture is 500 pesos (10;9 USD), and only a few farmer can afford it.

        The Makapuno Island was created when the Thai government constructed a dam at Kanchanaburi near the Burmese border. The hills were submerged and their peaks turned into more than 100 islands. All the coconut trees in one of the island were destroyed and 100 percent embryo-rescued Makapuno palms were planted. No stray coconut pollens can reach the island because of the water barrier. All the marketing of the island was based on the fact that its coconuts never germinate, because they are 100 percent Makapuno.

        A few years back, the Makapuno Island received a complaint from one of their customers that one of their 100-percent guaranteed Makapuno fruits germinated. The owner investigated and upon opening the fruit, it turned out to be Makapuno. As the evolutionary process is continually unfolding, one individual Makapuno was somehow able to develop enzymes to digest and metabolize the endosperm, thereby effecting germination. This began a search for the mother tree that bore this very unusual and attractive germinating Makapuno fruit.

        Nowadays, according to Mr. Ray Ong, from the agriculture section of the newspaper << Philippines Star, the seedlings of this new strain of << germinating Makapuno >> are sold in the Chatuchak Market in Bangkok.

        Makapuno island have lead to a great and unexpected improvement of the Makapuno variety. The new palms grow and germinate like normal coconut but has the soft solid endosperm of the normal Makapuno. In the framework of our research projets, we plan to create some more Makapuno islands in French Polynesia and the Maldives.

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        [1] <outbind://2/#_ftnref1>   See http://www.aseanbiotechnology.info/News/24001059.htm

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