Madagascar's highlands

How apples came

The apple reached Madagascar in 1870, to be grown on the central highlands of what the island’s own horticulturists call a “subtropical continental island of the Indian Ocean”¹. The first trees were planted around Soanindrariny, east of Antsirabe, and the planters were Norwegian missionaries: a 1986 thesis on the Antsirabe orchards records a local sweet variety, the pomme ménagère of Soanindrariny, “introduced around 1870 by Norwegian missionaries”². The date fits the mission’s own history, since the first Norwegian Lutheran missionaries arrived in the Antsirabe area in 1868¹³. The missionaries went on to import more than 70 varieties¹, and further waves followed: reinette-type apples in the colonial period around the 1950s, then a Swiss technical-cooperation programme from 1967 to 1980 and a North Korean mission after it, both with new planting material and modest results². Orchards planted around 1950 are still standing in the central zone, never renewed¹.

The apple became the economic symbol of the Antsirabe region². A 2016 territorial study still found the apple sector “emblematic” of Vakinankaratra, with Ambano and Soanindrariny as its showcase communes and the region “always the first producer of apples in all Madagascar”⁷.

How they’re grown

The orchards sit high. A survey of 836 growers across the five apple-growing regions of the highlands, carried out between 2019 and 2022, found apple trees between 1,022 and 2,165 m; Antsirabe itself lies at 1,476 m¹, and Soanindrariny, the heartland commune 29 km to its east, at about 1,788 m¹². The climate is a temperate altitude climate with a dry season of about seven months and a July mean of 14.4 °C. That cold matters: apple trees need more than a thousand hours below 5–7 °C to break their dormancy, and the highlands are the only part of the island that gets them¹.

Vakinankaratra is the main producing region, with the greatest variety, up to eight kinds per grower¹. Growers graft their own trees, and two thirds of them use the old local variety ‘Paoma mamy’ as the rootstock, because it makes the most vigorous stump; ‘Reine des Reinettes’ is the second choice¹. The orchards are small and many. The 2003 regional monograph counted 463,453 apple trees in the region, 423,247 of them in the district that contains Soanindrariny⁶, and in 2013 growers planted 1.5 million more¹. Away from the centre most people grow apples for the house¹.

The crop’s great enemy is a bagworm moth. Deborrea malgassa, once confined to its native forest, has become the main pest of the highland orchards and was named by 64% of the surveyed growers as their chief constraint¹. It is concentrated in Vakinankaratra, and its infestations peak from May to August, in the cold dry season⁴.

What’s picked

The fruit ripens from September to May and the trees rest from June to September. Growers pick early varieties such as ‘Anna’ in December and late ones such as ‘Granny Smith’ in May, with the high season from February to April¹. The rhythm is old: a 1965 study of the fruit arriving on the markets of Majunga, on the west coast, listed apples from Soanindrariny from January to April³.

The main varieties in the survey were ‘Golden Delicious’, grown by 538 of the growers, and ‘Paoma mamy’, grown by 406; the researchers gloss the latter as “ancestor’s apple”, the oldest variety on the island. ‘Anna’ and ‘Dorset’ are the early apples, ‘Granny Smith’ the late one, and the full list runs through ‘Reine des Reinettes’, ‘Reinette de Canada’, ‘Winter Banana’, ‘Braeburn’ and ‘Jonagold’¹. A 2025 student survey in Soanindrariny counted 15 varieties, with ‘Golden’ and ‘Pomme mamy’ the most planted¹⁰. Yields are modest: about 22 kg a tree in Vakinankaratra and under 10 kg elsewhere¹.

How much the island grows depends on who is counting. FAOSTAT puts the national crop at 7,210 tonnes in 2024⁵; the regional growers’ platform recorded 20,500 tonnes sold in 2020¹; a 2012 report claimed more than 36,000 tonnes a year for Vakinankaratra alone⁹; the 2025 student study arrived at 704 tonnes¹⁰. Between 1995 and 2021 the island exported about 6,800 tonnes¹.

On the table

Malagasy apples are eaten fresh and sold by the basket. Getting them out of the hills is the hard part: the harvest falls in the rainy season, when some growers’ roads are impassable and only the truckers who collect the fruit can reach them, so the truckers set the price¹. The regional development plan now lists a route de la pomme, an apple road, from Soanindrariny through Tsarahonenana to Antanambao, and a project to develop the sector “through processing”⁸. Prices swing with the weather: after the poor 2012 season, when heat above 32 °C and a cyclone had ruined the blossom, a kilo that had sold for 300–400 ariary at the farm gate the year before flared on the markets⁹.

Notes

• The Malagasy word for apple, paoma, is the French pomme¹¹.
• Antsirabe, the regional capital, was founded in 1872 and sits at about 1,500 m; it is known as the ville d’eau for its thermal springs¹³.
• The survey behind this entry covered 836 growers and 391 orchard sites in five regions; 768 of the growers were in Vakinankaratra¹.

Where the sources disagree

• The date. The 2023 survey and the 1986 thesis both give 1870 and the Norwegian missionaries^1,2; the 2003 regional monograph says apple growing was “introduced in 1930 by the Norwegians”⁶. The earlier date is the better supported.
• The size of the crop. Figures range from 704 to 36,000 tonnes a year depending on the source; FAOSTAT’s 7,210 tonnes is the only one comparable with other countries^5,9,10.
• The name ‘Paoma mamy’. The researchers gloss it as “ancestor’s apple”¹; in everyday Malagasy mamy means “sweet”, and the 1986 thesis calls the old Soanindrariny apple the pomme ménagère, the household apple². Whether these are one variety under three names is not settled.