Alice Waters Instagram – Known as “the Fruit of Ghosts,” Citrus indica (Memang Nerang) is the wild ancestor of all the oranges growing around the world today. Although it’s hard to find, small and tastes extremely bitter, this endangered fruit matters to us all. It possesses genetic traits which could help defend the global crop from a devastating pathogen known as citrus greening disease which is sweeping through the world’s citrus monocultures.
Author Dan Saladino has spent more than a decade researching foods at risk of extinction and highlighting the importance of saving crop diversity. To tell the story of Citrus indica he travelled to India’s Garo Hills, the place citrus originated and where the wild fruit still grows.
Dan trekked for hours through forests in search of Citrus indica and spent time with the Garo people, learning about their relationship with the fruit. In collaboration with @nesfas, an organisation protecting indigenous food systems, Rose was given special permission to film the trip on the condition the footage was shared with schools in nearby communities, as so little is known about this remote region and its endangered biodiversity.
While Dan was in the Garo Hills, Rose met with Tracy Khan, curator of the Citrus Collection at UC Riverside, home to the world’s largest citrus collection of 1,050 unique cultivars. With a permission slip signed by Governor Gavin Newsom we were allowed to leave with fruit picked from the collection’s Citrus indica tree.
We also traveled to Sicily to learn about unique and endangered citrus varieties that have evolved around Mount Etna. Here we ate varieties of psychedelically vivid oranges off the tree, their bright colours caused by the volcano’s micro-climate.
Back home, we sent the fruit from UC Riverside to National Geographic photographer Anand Varma to be documented, along with local citrus as unique as the varieties in Sicily, sourced by rare fruit distributor Joyce Zhang from small citrus farms across California.
This film documents our journey from India to Italy to California in search of rare and forgotten citrus, highlighting how preserving citrus biodiversity could be key to ensuring the survival of citrus itself. | Posted on 01/Apr/2025 20:01:17
