The Eurobin farmers first tasted yuzu, an Asian citrus, while in Japan promoting chestnuts.

They planted 20 trees in 2012 and established Mountain Yuzu.

They now have 1200 trees over two hectares but it came from a lot of trial and error, with knowledge of growing the fruit in Australia in limited supply.

“There’s quite a bit of juice imported into Australia but there’s no fresh fruit and because that zest is what’s really flavourful having the fresh fruit is really good,” Mrs Casey said.

“We’ve only got a small property and looked to add yuzu just to do something niche.”

The Caseys now are on the path to adding the unusual citrus fruit to Victoria’s list of exports and recently returned from a study tour of Japan, funded in part by Food Source Victoria.

They travelled to Koichi, Japan’s main yuzu growing region, to learn about the growth habits of the tree and management including pruning and fertilizer use.

“It was fantastic,” Mrs Casey said.

“We just turbo-charged our knowledge of yuzu and we met with some researchers who have been working on yuzus for 30 years.

“They were so informative and so willing to share all their knowledge and go through pests and diseases, just everything, with us.

“And we went to their research station where they had a trial plot of trees which were 20 plus years old, we learned some really valuable information.”

While they learned about how to grade and pack yuzu for export sale Mountain Yuzu’s first harvest was in April 2015 and the orchard was still to reach full capacity.

Yuzu comes on later than the chestnuts with very little overlap during picking.

“We’re just taking one step at a time … but it was a fantastic opportunity to get the scholarship,” Mrs Casey said.

Mountain Yuzu was among just a handful of small-scale yuzu growers in Australia and potential for growth in the domestic market was strong.

Yuzu is a tart citrus fruit that looks like a small grapefruit with an uneven skin, and is rarely eaten as a fruit.

Its zest is used as a garnish and its juice is used as a seasoning, similar to lemon juice. The juice is also used to make a range of drinks.

Mountain Yuzu had its first commercial harvest, yielding about 300 kilograms of fruit, in 2016 and expected to see a rapid rise in production as trees mature in coming years.

They also planned to double their orchard plantings to about 2000 trees during the next 12 months.

“It’s hard to say where the market is going to be because we’ve only got a small production and we’re selling all of what we’ve got,” Mrs Casey said.

“But if that expands up I don’t know … we’ll just have to wait and see how it goes.”