Reach for a Miracle Fruit.
On a 20-acre farm in Doolbi, just around the corner from Childers, Chris Beckwith & Karen Pereira formed a company called Rubyberry. They left the Daintree Rainforest and their exotic mangosteen farm to get into the business of making miracles.
Ok… Chris and Karen aren’t the ones performing the miracles. The hero of the story is a little-known fruit called Miracle fruit (Synsepalum dulcificum). Native to West Africa, this fruit produces Miraculin—a glycoprotein that binds to the sweet receptors on your tongue, altering how you taste things.
Ever tried munching on a lemon? Of course not. For those who have, the sourness is almost unbearable—face contortions, eye spasms, and a few strange looks from anyone watching. Here’s the twist… one miracle berry will have you chomping through lemons like they’re Skittles lollies. Sour transforms to sweet. It’s the same lemon, yet a completely different experience.
Many sour and acidic foods and drinks, like passionfruit, tomatoes, strawberries, and even vinegar will taste very sweet. Chris and Karen first discovered they had a Miracle fruit tree on their farm located in the Daintree Rainforest. This led to loads of fun as they experimented with the berries.
Miracle fruit is more than a party trick.
A friend of theirs, Richard, was going through cancer treatment and struggling to eat. One of the side effects of chemotherapy is Dysgeusia—basically, your taste buds stop working properly. Everything can taste metallic or just off. Richard was very malnourished.
Would Miracle fruit help him?
Richard was open to trying, so they sent some berries in a cryovac pack. His response? “Amazing, the bad taste disappeared!” just for an hour, but long enough to enjoy his beloved Italian food. He credited the fruit with improving his quality of life. This rare fruit is starting to make waves in Australian medicine, and that’s what Chris and Karen are truly interested in.
Rubyberry is one of only a handful of commercial Miracle berry producers in the world. Chris connected with a grower in Florida, who encouraged them to help Australians with taste issues as they do in places like the Miami Cancer Institute and hospitals across the USA. This led to the search for a new farm to grow the fruit in a similar climate.
The tropical summer seasons in Far North Queensland can be unreliable for a commercial crop. If Chris could recreate similar growing conditions in Australia to Florida, where would the best location be? He looked at the latitude in Florida, flipped it, and landed in the Bundaberg region. Finding flat and elevated land in Childers provided excellent growing conditions, turns out, it works.
The owners are no strangers to bringing rare and exotic produce to market. Their Mangosteen farm in the Daintree used a revolutionary trellis technique to keep trees low and protected from cyclones. They had a niche product that many Aussies didn’t know existed. (In case you haven’t tried a mangosteen, do yourself a favour and track one down; they are arguably the best-tasting fruit in the world.) Mangosteen is known as the Queen of Fruits and is a delicacy throughout Southeast Asia.
Chris and Karen overcame many difficulties pioneering mangosteen production in Australia, and they are facing another battle right now.
Their goal is to have Miracle fruit available in Queensland public hospitals.
Their product can help when patients suffer through treatment and their taste changes. But getting Miracle fruit into the public system has proved difficult.
Rubyberry pure fruit cubes are currently available in many private hospitals across Australia, but the public health system remains challenging.
Last year, Queensland Health added Rubyberry to their procurement list, and most hospitals have now been contacted and offered samples. This is not without setbacks. Our local Wide Bay Burnett Health service declined samples, believing inpatients should go search for a local pharmacy if they wished.
Rubyberry is grown and freeze-dried on the farm in Doolbi, and stocked in more than 100 pharmacies across Australia.
You can find RubyBerry locally at the following stockists:
Childers – Friendlies Pharmacy and Childers Community Pharmacy
Bundaberg – Friendly Society Pharmacy, Ramsay Pharmacy North Bundaberg and Ramsay Pharmacy South Bundaberg
Hervey Bay Stockists – The Friendlies Hervey Bay
Maryborough – Good Price Pharmacy Warehouse and the Friendlies Maryborough
Visit the website – www.rubyberry.com
Chitchat Newspaper – May 2026