Origins
The first pistachio trees were planted in New South Wales in 1935, but it wasn’t until the 1960s that work began at the CSIRO laboratories at Merbein, near Mildura, to adapt the crop to Australian growing conditions.
A new variety
The CSIRO imported seeds of the Red Aleppo and many other varieties 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, in New South Wales, and Pinnaroo and Waikerie, in South Australia.
Smaller areas have been planted to 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’ production manual for irrigation and fertiliser adopting regimes more suited to Australian conditions. 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 pistachio 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 Nińa event delivered record January rainfall on top of a wet spring in 2010.
Since then, strategies to manage both diseases have been successfully implemented.
Significant increases in new planting commenced in about 2015 and are strongly continuing. Production in 2024 exceeded 4,500 tonnes and is projected to exceed 10,000 tonnes by 2030.
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 machines that shakes the tree, dropping the pistachios into a collection conveyor.
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.
Processing pistachios
The main plant for processing pistachios is the Australian Pioneer Pistachio Company at Robinvale.
The process of preparing the pistachios from the farm starts with hulling, which removes the external husk, then drying. The dried nuts are then: needle-picked to remove the closed nuts; sized; graded to remove discoloured shells; roasted salted and packed.
The APPC operation has expanded several times since it was established in 1990. A totally new plant on a green field site was commissioned in 2024. This can be expanded over the next decade to process up to 30,000 tonnes.
A few growers have their own small hulling and drying plants.
Pistachio markets
Domestic demand for pistachios has steadily increased by about 9 per cent each year since 2000 but has been stable since the Covid induced peak in 2022.
Current demand is about 5000 tonnes, which Australian growers have not yet been able to meet until now.
Imports, mostly from California and Iran, have made up the shortfall.
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 but was as low 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 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 and Spain 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.
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.
The Australia pistachio industry today
By 2024 there were about 40 growers with 1500 hectares in production, and another 20 growers with 1500 hectares of juvenile plantings.
Most growers have plantings of less than 10 hectares, with larger growers (50 hectares to 400 hectares) producing more than 80 per cent of Australia’s nuts.
The 2024 crop has been estimated at a little over 4,500 tonnes.
The Australia pistachio industry of tomorrow
Attracted by potential returns and the opportunity to diversify into a burgeoning irrigated horticulture crop, corporate farms are watching the industry carefully.
In 2022 ASX-listed investment company Duxton Farms acquired the 1,185ha Piambie Farms, south of Boundary Bend, in Victoria.
Duxton Farms planted 130ha to pistachios in 2023 and the company plans to plant another 700ha in coming years.
In total, the nurseries advise that plantings of 500ha occurred in 2023 and they sold out with another 500ha in 2024.
Estimates, based on total plantings of 3000 hectares in 2023 – half of them yet to bear fruit – and nursery sales of a further 500 hectares are for Australian pistachio production to reach 9000 tonnes by 2028 and more than 14,000 tonnes in 2032.