Bamboo—Specialty Crop Profile
Bamboo has a range of benefits that make it excellent for developing small-scale productive enterprises. It is widely used throughout the Pacific for temporary building structures, rafts, harvesting poles, fishing rods, food and water containers, food tongs, and handicrafts. Bamboo species are most often harvested from the wild, such as secondary forests in Melanesia. In Hawai‘i, wild bamboo stands are commonly harvested for fishing poles, edible shoots, and some construction applications, as well as for some craft work and kadomatsu. It is little used for food except to small extent by Southeast Asian immigrants.
Uses
Bamboos produce woody culms that may be used whole as timber, or split for a multitude of wood products. Some food, fodder, and medicinal uses include
Edible shoots
Bamboo shoots are usually harvested at 30–60 cm tall, and are peeled before cooking. Shoots of many of the clump-forming tropical species contain high levels of cyanogens, and must be boiled well prior to consumption. Bamboo shoots may be consumed fresh on the day of harvest, in which case no postharvest handling is required beyond removing obviously damaged and below par shoots prior to sale. In Hawai‘i, fresh shoots are harvested and placed in cold water for rapid temperature reduction and stored at 4°C overnight. They are then trimmed and cleaned and packed in styrofoam boxes with an ice pack and are transported to market at 10–12°C. For storage, shoots can be peeled and boiled for 2–3 hours, continually refreshing the water. They are then cooled as rapidly as possible to 30°C or less and stored in jars in brine (salt content of 5–8% of the weight of the cooked shoots). Commercially, shoots are mainly canned, an involved process involving drying the shoots, removing the sheaths, rinsing, dressing, classification according to shape, grading, weighing, placing in cans, sterilizing, adding water, adjusting the pH, cooling, heat preservation, inspection and packing. Nastus elatus(New Guinea sweet shoot) is an outstanding edible shoot that can be eaten with minimal preparation.
Medicine
Tabasheer, a silicaceous concretion found in the internodes of some species, is used medicinally, as is leaf sap which is sometimes used as an eye drop. There are many other uses by indigenous peoples, but no commercialisation is known.
Fodder
Bamboo leaves make excellent fodder for livestock including cows, horses, and pigs.
Charcoal
Waste products, including branches and sawdust, can be used to produce charcoal and charcoal briquettes. These burn hot and clean. Bamboo charcoal is also highly adsorptive and is often used in purification systems, particularly the sugar industry, and in household odour treatments.
Agroforestry/interplanting practices
Intercropping is easily accomplished with wide range of annual crops during the early years of establishing a bamboo plantation in which the annual crops can provide cash income while the bamboo is maturing sufficiently to be harvested. Practices for intercropping mature plantations with timber species exist.
There is limited deliberate cultivation of bamboos on family farms in Pacific islands. Given the increased interest in growing bamboos for multiple products in various Pacific islands, including Hawai‘i, Fiji, and Samoa, the new exotic species will be increasingly incorporated into multi-species, multipurpose agroforestry systems as supplies of planting materials become available.
Scale of commercial production worldwide
The latest data indicates that international trade in bamboo products is worth US$2.5 billion per annum, the major importers being the affluent nations, particularly the EU and the U.S. China is the major exporter. It is not known how much is imported into or exported from various Pacific islands, but the quantities are expected to be relatively small.
Original source of this article
This article is excerpted by permission of the publisher from
Benton, A., L. Thomson, P. Berg, and S. Ruskin. 2011. Bamboo (various species). In: Elevitch, C.R. (ed.). Specialty Crops for Pacific Island Agroforestry. Permanent Agriculture Resources (PAR), Holualoa, Hawai‘i. © Permanent Agriculture Resources