Asian eggplant: one of Ontario’s newest local foods

Chinese long and Indian round eggplant are one of Ontario’s newest locally grown vegetable crops, thanks to ongoing research at the Vineland Research and Innovation Centre (Vineland).

Some quantities of field-grown Canadian Asian eggplant are already available at retail stores in Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia and Quebec, but researchers at Vineland are also working on developing year-round greenhouse production of the veggies.

Vineland’s World Crops program started in 2008 with a series of projects to evaluate different vegetable crops popular with new Canadians from Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. Okra and eggplant were ultimately selected as the two most promising crops based on potential volumes and growing ability in Ontario.

“In 2015, over 24 million kilograms of eggplant were imported into Canada. This has increased by 32 per cent in the last five years, so by 2030, we expect a market of 50 million kilograms just for eggplant,” explains Dr. Viliam Zvalo, a vegetable production research scientist at Vineland working on the project.

He adds that key markets lie with immigrant communities particularly from South East Asia, but there’s also opportunity created by the changing palates of long-time Canadians.Harvested eggplant in the greenhouse - webAccording to Zvalo, the project’s objective is to give Canadian growers the chance to participate in the market opportunities created by immigration and changing consumer preferences by developing production systems for these new crops.

Vineland’s researchers are currently working with Chinese long eggplant (a bright purple vegetable of about 30 centimetres in length), Japanese or Taiwanese eggplant that has a similar shape but with a darker colour, and the smaller Indian round eggplant.

“The Chinese long eggplant and Japanese eggplant represent about 85 per cent of the market. The Indian round eggplant offers a smaller opportunity, but we’ve had some interest from retailers hoping to market it as baby eggplant, so that could grow this category,” Zvalo says.

In a greenhouse setting, eggplant vines grow five to seven metres high, whereas they only grow 60 to 90 centimetres tall in the field. Plantings are at a density of 2.3 plants per square metre with three heads per plant for a total of 6.9 heads per square metre, similar to what commercial growers would have.