South Africa: Baboon fruit is pick of the crop

A SOUTH African farmer who spotted baboons' fondness for one of his tangerine trees, is now marketing the fruit around the world.

Alwyn van der Merwe was told by a farmworker that the monkeys had eaten all the fruit from one particular tree, which was ready to crop three to four weeks before all the others in his orchards.

Tests showed the fruit was sweeter as well as early, which Van der Merwe puts down to natural mutation.

After producing more of the trees using grafts, his company plans to export them.