+

70% of the world's macadamia can be traced back to a single tree in Queensland

While we know most of the world's macadamias are grown commercially in Hawaii, the nuts are actually indigenous to Australia. Cathy Nock, a Research Fellow at Southern Cross Plant Science, has undertaken research on this popular nut and has found that 70% of the world's macadamia can be traced back to a single tree in Queensland.

"It was a bit of a shock to see just how narrow the gene pool was from which the Hawaiian cultivars were developed,” Catherine Nock, a plant scientist at Australia’s Southern Cross University and first author of a new paper in Frontiers in Plant Science, tells Jennifer Nichols of ABC News. “They represent about 70 per cent of the trees that are grown in orchards around the world.”