The Origins of Pistachios
Where are they now?
Australian plantings have tripled in the last decade and are continuing to expand. Australia is, and will remain, a trivial producer for at least the next few decades.
About pistachios
They are deciduous and dioecious (have distinctly male or female reproductive organs), and rely on wind pollination to transport pollen from a male tree to the female flowers for fruit set. To ensure best production, it is recommended that male trees be planted upwind of every 20 to 30 female trees.
A New Variety
The CSIRO imported seeds of the Red Aleppo variety from the US Department of Agriculture’s field station at Chico, in California.
They were planted at the Merbein horticultural research station and the most promising seedlings were chosen.
In 1982, the CSIRO released the new variety Sirora – along with suitable pollinating males – paving the way for development of commercial pistachio orchards, mostly in the Murray Valley region.
The region includes dry, inland irrigation areas along both sides of the Murray River from Swan Hill, in Victoria, to Kyalite, in New South Wales, and Pinnaroo and Loxton, in South Australia.
Smaller areas have been planted with pistachios in Western Australia.
The two preferred female varieties in Australia are Sirora (97 per cent) and Kerman (1 per cent), with small numbers of other varieties.
Pistachio production
The first Australian pistachio growers planted orchards of less than 5 hectares. Larger plantings of 100 hectares started in 1984, and by 1990 there were 15 growers.
The withdrawal of agronomic support by the Victorian and South Australian governments made it difficult for growers to establish a new crop in a new area and they struggled to achieve economic yields.
Nonetheless, they survived by working together. In the mid-1990s growers moved away from slavishly following the University of California Davis growers’ manual and yields improved.
The industry has survived outbreaks of two damaging diseases.
From the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, up to 40 per cent of trees were infected with the bacterial disease Xanthomonas translucens pv. which killed up to 15 per cent of trees.
The fungal disease Colletotrichum acutatum wiped out the 2011 crop and killed up to a third of tree branches in the easternmost growing areas, which were subject to intense rainfall and flooding.
A strong La Nina event delivered record January rainfall on top of a wet spring in 2010.
Since then, strategies to manage both diseases have been successfully implemented.
The industry has recorded average annual growth of about 9 per cent since 2000, and by 2018 annual production had cracked 3000 tonnes.
And after an off year in 2023, the 2024 pistachio crop is expected to reach 4200 tonnes.
Australian orchards achieve an average of about 3 tonnes per hectare across the two-year crop cycle, reaching up to 6 tonnes per hectare in an on-crop year.
Harvesting Pistachios
Pistachios are mostly mechanically harvested in late summer-early autumn using a side-by-side machine that shakes the tree, dropping the pistachios into a collection hopper.
This ensures the nuts don’t touch the ground and can quickly be transferred for processing, reducing the likelihood of fungal growth which can cause spoiling if kept in storage too long.
The first over-the-row harvester was introduced to Australia in 2022, when Ian McFarlane, of Cobdogla, South Australia, imported a Tenias harvester from Spain.
Processing pistachios
More than 95 per cent of Australian pistachios are processed and marketed as nuts in shell, with some dried kernels, by Australian Pioneer Pistachio Company at Robinvale, Victoria.
The process of preparing the pistachios for sale starts with hulling, which removes the external husk, followed by shelling, drying, cleaning, grading, needle-picking, sorting, sizing, roasting and salting, and packing.
The APPC operation has expanded several times since it was established in 1992 and a new plant commissioned for 2024 will be able to process up to 30,000 tonnes at full capacity.
A handful of growers have their own small hulling and drying plants, which account for up to 50 tonnes per year.
Pistachio Markets
Domestic demand for pistachios has steadily increased by about 9 per cent each year since 2000.
Current demand is about 5000 tonnes, which Australian growers have not yet been able to meet, despite increasing production by about 9 per cent each year.
Imports, mostly from California and Iran, have made up the shortfall to date.
Pricing depends on global supply and demand which can fluctuate dramatically from year to year. According to Statista, prices from 2010 to 2022 peaked at $US3.57 per pound, or $10.90 per kilogram in 2014 and fell to as little as $US1.68 per pound, or $5.12 per kilogram in 2016.
Australian domestic pricing however reflects the landed cost of imported pistachios, increasing returns to growers above what they could achieve if they were exporting to Europe or Asia. Once production exceeds Australian consumption, growers will have to look for more export markets.
At the same time as Australian production is rising, we face greater competition from overseas producers as huge areas of new plantings in California come into production.
Billionaire pistachio producer Stewart Resnick, who is President of Wonderful – the world’s biggest processor and marketer of pistachios – is reported to have told his growers to expect prices to fall below $US2 per pound (equal to $6.50 per kilogram) in the medium term as a result of the coming surge in supply.
US grower prices usually refer to unstained splits after hulling, grading and marketing costs are deducted, so the average price could be even lower.
Australia also has a small domestic market for fresh in-hull pistachios, estimated at less than 50 tonnes, which is the equivalent of about 15 tonnes of dried product. Favoured by consumers with Middle Eastern backgrounds, they are carefully hand harvested, transported by refrigerated trucks, and sold through wholesale fruit and vegetable markets in Australia’s capital cities.
