Indigenous-grown rosella plant from the Northern Territory will soon be sold in cafes in Adelaide and beyond.
Not-for-profit enterprise Food Ladder is trying to capitalise on the burgeoning bush foods market by growing rosella, also known as wild hibiscus.
The organisation has leafy greens and tomatoes in a hydroponic greenhouse just off Katherine's main street and is growing the rosella on a small patch of dirt outside the greenhouse.
Rosella, originally from Africa, is found growing wild across northern Australia and is used in teas, jams and desserts.
Food Ladder's horticulture and training manager Scott McDonald said while rosella was generally considered a wild plant, once under irrigation it could produce up to seven kilograms of fruit per plant.
"They can get quite thin and sparse when they're out in the bush, but with irrigation, a bit of fertiliser, you can get a plant that is up to two metres tall and around two metres wide which produces a lot of fruit," he said.
The rosella flowers are picked, stripped of their inner seed and put into a dehydrator for about 12 hours, Mr McDonald said.
"That dries it out quite nicely and gives us a product that is used predominantly for rosella tea," he said.
"The tea is high in vitamin C, antioxidants and those type of things, so it is quite a healthy tea, and a lot of people will mix it with lemon myrtle and lemongrass to get different flavoured teas.
"The other main use for rosella is making jam, either picking the produce fresh and making it instantly or freeze the rosellas whole."
From Katherine to the cafes
Chef and native food supplier Andrew Fielke will distribute Food Ladder's first shipment of dried rosella to cafes around Adelaide.
He said there was strong demand for Australian-grown rosella.
"The great thing is we will be able to promote this as from a particular community, and the fact that it is Australian native rosella and not the imported rosella," Mr Fielke said.
"A lot of tea blenders are using imported dried rosella which is grown in other countries — there are a lot of rosella plants grown in countries like Malaysia — but [there are none] grown by Indigenous people that I'm aware of."
Mr McDonald said Food Ladder was aiming to trial other bush foods in its hydroponic greenhouse.
"There's native basil, which I think would be a great one to try in a hydroponics type situation, there is the bush cucumber, we can look at yams," he said.
"There are a whole range of bush foods that we are looking into that can potentially be grown in a more intensive situation and a great way to get local people engaged in agriculture as an alternative to wild harvesting."
