Plan to grow more local fruit

Local fruit production is to be given top priority at the government’s nursery, as foreign fruit trees will be phased out in favour of indigenous ones and local fruit variations.
Malta’s only accredited fruit propagation nursery – the St Vincent de Paul Nursery – will be working to make local varieties of fruit trees, which are more suited and adapted to the Maltese climate, available to the farming community.
The production will include pomegranates, loquats and black and white mulberries, among others.
“Local varieties of fruit trees are under threat of disturbance or disappearance and mostly at risk of genetic erosion,” a spokesperson for the Agriculture Ministry told Times of Malta.

He said this was due to increasing dependency and cultivation of foreign commercial varieties.
This, in turn, was leading to a greater chance of plant pests and diseases, detrimental to the Maltese flora, being introduced.
“Such genetic resources, being of traditional, agricultural and cultural importance, need to be conserved in order to halt their eventual extinction,” he added.
Their sustainable use and the superior characteristics, compared with those of foreign varieties, were, therefore,...