Story: Mary Ankrah
SOME Ghanaian farmers are now making gains from the fruits of the Allanblackia (“Kusieadwe” or “Sonkyi”) tree used for the production of natural vegetable oil.
Natural vegetable oil produced from the fruit of the tree can be used in the manufacturing of food and non-food products.
The tree, aside from the seed serving as an additional source of income for farmers, has a medicinal value for the cure of toothache, diarrhoea, upper respiratory tract infections, dysentery and stomach-ache.when incorporated with other trees and crops such as cocoa.
The Allanblackia tree, which grows in the wild in the Western, Central, Eastern and Ashanti regions of the country has started to attract international attention.
It is at a result of this that the Allanblackia partnership in Ghana, including the Forestry Research Institute of Ghana (FORIG), the World Conservation Union (IUCN), Technoserve (TNS) and the Institute of Cultural Affairs (ICA) is seeking for investors and stakeholders to develop businesses out of the tree.
Speaking at a national forum on the tree in Accra on the theme: “Allanblackia: An Economic Tree,” the Project Manager for Technoserve, Mr Adu-Sarkodie, said to increase supply and provide local communities with an opportunity to grow the tree on their homesteads, Unilever had supported the establishment of a private-public initiative, Novella Africa, to set up supply chains and to cultivate the trees for commercial seed production.
He said the tree had the potential to produce 50 to 200 kilogrammes of seed per season, generating revenue of GH¢20 to GH¢100 per tree.
According to him, there was enough Allanblackia in the wild to produce over 120 metric tonnes of oil to sustain Uniliver’s soap manufacturing industry in the country.
Mr Adu-Sarkodie said the tree was being domesticated by the FORIG and intercropped by farmers with other trees and crops such as cocoa for sustainable biodiversity conservation and management in the country.
“When intercropped, farmers and their crops are safe because it serves as a windbreak and the productivity of your crops are improved,” he said.
In his presentation, the Project Coordinator of IUCN, Ghana, Mr Samuel Kofi Nyame, asserted that a massive use of the Allanblackia could reduce poverty in target communities through new income generation possibilities; increased export earnings and improved economic development.
He explained that once the government mainstreamed Allanblackia into national level development priorities and programmes, it would improve afforestation as well as restore degraded lands.
Mr Joseph Adubofuor of the Department of Food Science and Technology of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) said Allanblackia floribunda kernels were high yielding oilseed which could serve commercially as a rich source of oil with a proximate composition of fat content of 67.59 per cent while the fatty acid profile content, stearic acid and oleic acid was about 52 and 45 per cent, respectively.
“The percentage composition of the triglycerides make the use of Allanblackia floribunda an alternative vegetable fat to palm oil, cocoa butter and shear butter fat in food and non-food products,” he emphasised.
For his part, the Member of Parliament (MP) for Asuogyaman, Dr Jones Asare-Akoto, observed that the plant was doing better in terms of foreign exchange than cocoa in other countries and could be useful for the economic growth of the country.
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