Over 30 years ago, Dr Abdul Aziz Zakaria’s father gave him a plot of land in their home state of Kelantan. Aziz’s father had been a passionate durian collector. Aziz, a lecturer on irrigation at Universiti Pertanian Malaysia (UPM) at the time, began to follow in his father’s footsteps. “I started collecting and planting durians in 1988 as a hobby when my father told me, ‘This one-acre farm is yours.’ Before that, I used to bring seedlings back for my father to plant as I was exposed to a lot of durian clones when I was working in UPM,” recalls Aziz, 73.