Florida farmers turn to ancient tree from India as citrus industry dries up

With much of the Sunshine State’s once-famous citrus production having come to a near standstill over the past two decades due to two deadly diseases – citrus blight and citrus canker disease – some farmers are now turning to the Pongamia tree, a climate-resilient tree with the potential to produce plant-based proteins and a sustainable biofuel.

Pongamia has been used for years to provide shade and produces legumes – small brown beans – that are so bitter that even wild boars won’t eat them.

But unlike the orange and grapefruit trees that long populated these rural groves northwest of West Palm Beach, Florida, Pongamia trees don’t require much care.

Pongamia trees also require no fertilizers or pesticides. They thrive in drought or rain. And they don’t need teams of workers to harvest the beans. A machine simply shakes the tiny beans off the branches when they’re ready to harvest.

Terviva, a San Francisco-based company founded in 2010 by Naveen Sikka, then uses a patented process to remove the biopesticides responsible for the bitter taste, making the beans suitable for food production.

“Florida offers a rare opportunity for both Terviva and former citrus growers. The historic decline of the citrus industry has left farmers without a crop that can grow profitably on hundreds of thousands of acres, and a very scalable replacement is needed very soon,” Sikka told The Associated Press. “Pongamia is the perfect solution.”

What is the Pongamia tree?

The Pongamia is a wild tree native to India, Southeast Asia and Australia.

The legume is now used to make several products, including Panova cooking oil and protein, which is a key ingredient in Aloha’s Kona protein bars. The company also produces protein flour.

The legumes also produce oil that can be used as biofuel, especially in aviation, and leaves a very low carbon footprint, says Ron Edwards, CEO of Terviva and a longtime citrus grower in Florida.

Transforming a wild tree into a native tree was not easy, Edwards said.

“There are no books to read about it because no one else has done it,” he said.

Bees and other pollinators feed on the Pongamia flowers, supporting local biodiversity, Edwards said. One hectare of these trees could potentially yield the same amount of oil as four hectares of soybeans, he added.

What’s left after the oil is removed from the pongamia bean is “a very high-quality protein that can be used as a substitute in baking and smoothies and all sorts of other plant-based protein products,” Edwards said. “There’s a lot of potential for the food industry and the oil and petroleum industry.”

Why Florida?

“We know that pongamia grows well in Florida and that the end markets for the oil and protein derived from pongamia beans – biofuel, animal feed and food ingredients – are huge,” Sikka said. “So farmers can now reduce their costs and become more aligned with the latest developments in sustainable agricultural practices.”

At a nursery near Fort Pierce, workers skilled in the Pongamia grafting technique attach a portion of the mother tree to a Pongamia rootstock, ensuring that the genetics and desired characteristics of the mother tree are retained in all of Terviva’s trees.

Pongamia vs. Citrus Fruits

Citrus fruits were Florida’s most important crop for many years until they were overtaken by diseases such as citrus canker and later citrus greening starting in the 1990s.

Citrus canker, a bacterial disease, is not harmful to humans but causes lesions on fruits, stems and leaves, ultimately rendering the trees unproductive.

Citrus greening, also known as huanglongbing, slowly kills trees and spoils the fruit, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Since 2005, the disease has spread throughout Florida, devastating countless orchards and reducing citrus production by 75%. The disease has spread to Louisiana, Texas and California.

Hurricane Ian caused approximately $1.8 billion in damage to Florida’s agriculture in September 2023, hitting the citrus industry at the beginning of the growing season.

Diseases and climate problems have also affected most of the world’s major citrus-producing countries. For example, this year’s harvest in Brazil – the world’s largest orange juice exporter – will be the worst in 36 years due to floods and drought, according to a forecast by Fundecitrus, an organization of citrus growers in the state of Sao Paulo.

But climate and diseases have little impact on Pongamia trees, company representatives said.

“It’s just a tough tree, a jungle-hardened tree,” said Edwards. “It can withstand a lot and needs very little maintenance.”

Pongamia also grows well in Hawaii, where it now thrives on land formerly used for sugar cane.

What do the citrus farmers say?

John Olson, owner of Circle O Ranch west of Fort Pierce, has replaced his grapefruit groves with 215 acres (87.01 hectares) of Pongamia trees.

“We went through all the ups and downs of citrus and eventually gave up citrus production because of greening,” Olson said. “The citrus industry in Florida largely died.”

Although the grapefruit grove was modest, it was common in the 1980s and 1990s for a grove of that size to be profitable, Olson said.

Edwards said farmers used various sprays to kill the insects that spread the disease, but eventually the cost of caring for the citrus trees became too high.

Then he decided to take a different path.

“What attracted me to Pongamia was the fact that it allows you to reuse fallow land that was used to grow citrus and is now lying fallow,” he said. “From an environmental point of view, it’s very attractive because it can replace some of the oils and plant proteins that are produced today by things like palm oil, which is a much more environmentally damaging crop.”

What about biofuel?

In December 2023, Terviva signed an agreement with Mitsubishi Corporation to provide biofuel feedstocks that can be converted into biodiesel, renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel.

“Our partnership with Mitsubishi is off to a great start,” said Sikka, noting that the company works closely with Mitsubishi on tree planting, product development and sales. “Terviva’s progress has accelerated thanks to Mitsubishi’s expertise and global leadership in all areas of Terviva’s business.”

What foods does Pongamia produce?

The research is still ongoing, but Edwards said they have made really good graham crackers in addition to the cooking oil and other plant-based protein products, including flour and protein bars.

Pongamia offers an alternative to soybean and yellow pea protein “if you don’t want your protein to come from meat,” he said.