After three years of watching his orchard of yuzu trees mature, Imbil grower Dave Moffatt is cautiously expecting the 2026 season to make all of the hard work in establishing the crop to be worthwhile.
The past season was encouraging, with reasonable cropping and developing market outlets.
Yet this curious variety of citrus lemon is not the easiest crop to grow. The trees are thick with spikes that make harvesting difficult.
Wearing welder’s gloves is one way to protect yourself.
If you were to pick the hardest, toughest, most spiky citrus fruit to grow … it would be yuzu, Dave has told me.
Yuzu fruit is notoriously difficult to grow and pick. All pruning and harvesting is done by hand, not by machines.
Then the fruit is so finnicky. The juice is very minimal, so it is often expensive.
Even in a good crop, one in two of the fruit can be second grade.
Yet the fruit is valued for it’s highly aromatic rind and is one of the few citrus in the world that is able to maintain it’s tart/sourness at high cooking temperatures.
Thought to have originated in China, it is now associated mainly with Japan.
It is used in East Asian cuisine for sauces, dressings, and preserves. However, here in Australia it is also finding a market with distillers and brewers.
Yuzu is used to make various sweets, including marmalade and cake.
The oil from its skin is marketed as a fragrance. In Japan, bathing with yuzu during the winter solstice is a custom that dates to at least the early 18th century.
The yuzu bath is said to guard against colds, treat the roughness of skin, warm the body, and relax the mind.
Dave and Julie Moffatt are among a handful of growers on Australia’s east coast – the main producer being in the foothills of the Victorian Alps.
They are excited at the way the crop is developing but, after the recent storms throughout South East Queensland, Dave warns that small crop farmers and orchardists are always one hail storm away from disaster.
Just ask the mango growers – early blossoms can be devastated by cyclonic conditions.
The yuzu fruit is harvested by hand to ensure it is picked at its prime.
It can be used both as a green fruit but usually when it is more ripe and starts to yellow.
“It’s a prized citrus in the culinary world because it is rare,” Dave said. “We will be packing here as well.
“I pick in grades – there’s one grade that will go to the distilleries and processing people that want the yuzu flavour but don’t care how rough they look.
“The top of the line go to providors to be sent to restaurants. Mostly in Sydney but to the Sunshine Coast and Noosa as well.
“It’s a short picking season so I need a big market that can take it all at one time.
“For one good yuzu that comes off the tree there is one second-grade fruit to go with it.
“And that’s very good – growers in Victoria say that 50-50 is about what you can hope for.”
The Mary Valley orchard started with about 300 trees but there have been more plantings as those initial trees reach their premier cropping potential.
However, Dave has added another citrus line that will attract as much interest as the yuzu.
Sudachi. No it’s not a word game. It’s a lime, Dave said.
“If you talk to Japanese chefs there are some dishes you cannot make without sudachi.
“I was contacted by a professional chef. I don’t know of anyone else in Queensland growing them, so I planted some of those and they’re about another year or so away.”
Not only that, Dave has planted some calamansi.
Again, I have to ask if they are olives?
“No, not olives. Calamansi is it kind of cumquat and it’s very big in South East Asia, especially in the Philippines.
“It’s a good botanical for gin. I’m having a crack at that as well.
“People have this idea that citrus are oranges, limes and lemons but it’s a field of so many different fruits to look that fall in the citrus flavour.
“Grapefruit sits in its category but you have Buddha’s hand – one that has a very unusual shape.”
At first glance it looks like fingers on a hand and has a wonderfully fragrant fruit that can be eaten entirely.
Then there are oranges that are bitter. Dave said the seville orange is very underrated.
“It’s the best marmalades you can get. Seville has intense oil.”
Dave and Julie grow biodynamically, using approved organic sprays wherever possible instead of synthetic fertiliser.
Importantly, no waste leaves the property. Nitrogen for the soil comes from chook manure, and mulching is used to maintain moisture.
The plants are drip-fed water from the dam on the property.
As members of Slow Food Noosa the way Dave and Julie advocate for good, clean, and fair food for all, they have been awarded a Snail of Approval for preserving food cultures, promoting sustainable/traditional farming, and encouraging local, seasonal ingredients, biological diversity, and community.
As such they have collaborated with fellow Snail of Approval recipients John and Cara Tynan of Noosa Hinterland Brewing to create a yuzu beer, and with Sunshine & Sons distillers for yuzu gin.
Yuzu is low in calories but highly nutritious, and contains powerful antioxidants.
The restaurants are very keen to get them, Dave said.
“If you’ve got really nice looking fruit they are going to zest every bit of that … it’s all about being fresh.
“There’s a very good providor in Sydney who picks them up straight from my door
“Local providors will take fruit too so I don’t have to go cap in hand to individual restaurants.
“The providor supplies everything the restaurants require.”
Dave picks into crates on the front of a barrow and takes them into a shed to be packed into 10 kg cartons.
“We don’t pick everything through at one go – we come back a number of times to select the fruit when they’re ready.
“You probably go through three or four times.
“You get them just with the blush on the skin. This is when they are yellow with a bit of green left on them.
“They’ve got a little bit more juice at that point.
“Yuzu don’t have a lot of juice anyway so the fruit can lose that over time.
“Being a small grower I have a cool room to store some.”
Yuzu don’t like nitrogen or too much moisture, so Dave admits they are still learning to grow them.
They really suffered with the wet from last summer through winter and he was quite concerned.
“I tried different things to deal with root rot – even on a slope like this. The ground just stayed too wet.”
The answer was to put on a lot of other natural fungi and beneficial microorganisms.
“The fact is most fungal disease is a bully but if you can get a heap of others in competition that can get them into submission.
“This is better than putting on an anti-fungal and killing the fungus.
“You need fungus – it’s part of the natural system.
“We have to start looking after our soil.
“While synthetic fertiliser will make the plant grow, I want a tree that will last 200 years.
“Some of the grafted trees will last 25 years but giving them chemical nutrients is a short-term thing.
“After 25 years we want to have a better soil than when the trees were planted.”
There’s much more interest in soil now, Dave said – it’s more what’s happening in the soil and that can determine how nutrient-intense the fruit or vegetables will be.
He said visitors who stay at their farm accommodation Maggie‘s Cottage show interest in what goes on at their orchard. What the fruit is, how it is harvested, where it goes from the farm.
“A lot of people don’t know what they are, and are interested in the process of how you grow it without any chemicals.
“And then to have a taste of it, to show that it’s like lemon and that we can use it in different ways.
“Some really top-end restaurants love it.”
To produce a yuzu tree Dave takes a seed or try to strike a plant cutting by taking a stem section, and planting it in moist propagating mix.
Otherwise by a marcotting method or air layering in which a branch is wounded while still attached to the mother plant. A medium such as moss is used and then wrapped to encourage roots.
Once roots have developed, the branch is severed and the new plant added to the orchard.
“You don’t have to wait five years, and you’ve taken it off your best tree.”
Dave’s hope is he will have trees that are still producing over three generations.
It’s much the same with grapes and olives – old trees can make the best produce.
With some citrus if you plant by seed you may not necessarily get the true variety but with yuzu you get that, Dave said.
NEW PLANTINGS
Sudachi is a small, round, green Japanese citrus fruit, prized for its tart, aromatic flavor, which is zestier than a lemon or lime.
It’s not typically eaten whole but is used as a flavoring in sauces, marinades, and drinks, often served as a souring agent for fish, soba and udon noodles.
It is a hybrid of yuzu and either a koji or tachibana orange and is a specialty of Japan.
Calamansi is grown in the Phillipines, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam as well as the northern regions and tropical zones of Australia where they do not receive winter chill.
A temperature drop stimulates the colour on the rind.
Preferrably they remain green, or a yellowish green with flesh that has an orange colour and a tangy, sharp-flavoured juice.
With farmers and growers such as Dave Moffatt it further enhances the Mary Valley and surrounds as regions that are prepared to try not just new varieties but take on fresh ideas.
At the same time it reminds of the resilience and determination of our producers to present good, clean food while thinking generations ahead – they are making an investment in the future.
