Hawaii is the leading macadamia producing state in the U.S. In the US, and the main global competitors for macadamias include Kenya, Costa Rica, South Africa and Australia. Macadamias belong to the Proteaceae family and the two species that are cultivated are Macadamia integrifolia and M. How is that possible? Well, the answer is very simple.
Hawaii is still one of the world's largest producers of macadamia nuts and was once known as the world capital of macadamia nuts, producing 90 percent of the world's macadamia nuts. The macadamia tree is related to the protein family. Practically all of the macadamia nuts in Hawaii come from the Big Island of Hawaii. Hawaii was the site of the world's first commercial macadamia nut farm.
A sugar plantation manager named William H. Purvis introduced macadamia to Hawaii in the late 19th century. Macadamia nuts are Hawaii's archetypical snack because they join the state as easily as SPAM or pineapples. But while the delicious, buttery nuts are iconic on the island, they didn't originate there.
Australian Aboriginal tribes had enjoyed this tasty and healthy nut for thousands of years before European colonists discovered the plant in Queensland in the mid-19th century. It wasn't until 1881 that sugar plantation investor William Purvis brought macadamia trees to Hawaii in an effort to protect their crops from strong winds. In 1916, a large plantation of macadamia nut trees was carried out as part of the reforestation project off the coast of Hamakua, on the Big Island. Two well-known pastry shops, Ellen Dye Candies and the candy store Alexander Young Hotel, began manufacturing and selling chocolate-covered macadamia nuts in the mid to late 1930s.
It wasn't until the 1950s, when large companies appeared, that the production of macadamia nuts for commercial sale became important. The station had inherited several previously planted macadamia nut trees, and work began to develop them as a viable crop for Hawaii. A visit to Australia in 1881 led William Purvis, a plant collector and investor from the Big Island, to bring the first macadamia nut trees to the Hawaiian Islands. Gradually, trees with nuts that are difficult to break began to become popular in Hawaii, in part due to instructions from the Hawaii Agricultural Experiment Station, which began to suggest macadamia nuts as a supplement industry for coffee producers.
Despite the fact that in both 1918 and 1919, HAES distributed many free macadamia nut trees to coffee farmers for planting, there was little interest in macadamia trees as a crop. Although macadamia nuts are native and cultivated in Australia, most commercial production takes place in Hawaii. This means that the commercial macadamia tree has incredibly low genetic diversity, and the researchers hope that their findings will spur the discovery of wild trees and more “new genes”. Other planters quickly followed him and set up macadamia nut farms on Oahu, The Big Island, and elsewhere.
Native to Australia, macadamia trees are only found naturally in southern Queensland and northern New South Wales. Some of these small farms began planting macadamia nuts as a complementary crop for local consumption and as a source of food. Burns School of Medicine in 2000 and published in the prestigious Archives of Internal Medicine journal, reports that eating macadamia nuts can have a positive effect on blood cholesterol levels. The Hawaiian macadamia industry was grown from a variety from Australia that was repeatedly cloned.
The results of the study also confirm that macadamia nuts have equal or better nutritional and dietary benefits than olive oil and other nuts. .
