DPI regional director Stuart Smith said the trial aimed to see if Central Australia could make the most of a booming market for almonds and almond-based products.

"The world demand for almonds has shot up enormously in the past 20 years," he said.

"The production areas in California experienced a big drought, so supply went down [and] in Australia the almond industry has boomed - it's one of our major exports now.

"We thought, 'Is there a possibility that we can get onto that wave of opportunity as well', and that's why we've initiated this trial."

Despite the potential challenges of transporting products long distances to major population centres, Mr Smith believed there could be a market for Red Centre almonds.

"Sometimes these things can be a niche product that supplies a local market or a special market, or they might have special characteristics," he said.

The trial almond trees are self-pollinating, which would keep operational costs relatively low for potential growers.

Mr Smith said the trees required a similar amount of water to other fruit trees in the region like mangoes and table grapes.

"Because it's dry and windy in the Red Centre, there's always a certain amount of evapotranspiration that you need to balance out with irrigation," he said.

"I don't think we've done the exact number on megalitres per hectare, but it wouldn't be much different to any other fruit tree around here."

But will they bear fruit?

Mr Smith said it was still too early to determine whether the trial trees would produce enough fruit to be commercially viable.

"They seem to be growing alright [but] it will be a matter of seeing if we can stimulate enough flowering to produce enough fruit," he said.

"If it's too warm, it might be a case that all they produce is leaves.

"[That's] what we found with avocados when we did trials over many years in Darwin in Katherine - they make great windbreak trees but they never really produce much fruit."

Almond trees are meant to lose their leaves over the cooler months before flowering in spring, but many of the trees in the Ti Tree trial are yet to flower.

"The ones in Alice Springs seemed to lose their leaves - obviously it's a bit colder down there," Mr Smith said.

"They haven't had any nights below zero in Ti Tree this year [so the trees haven't lost their leaves] ... but this is a trial and we'll just gather the data as we go and see if we can get any fruit."

DPI technical officer Glen Oliver said he was hopeful the trees that had not flowered might do so later in the year.

"This is the first winter they've been through since we put them in the ground last year," he said.

"We're just going to wait for the results, see if they're going to flower or not."

Changing diets are driving demand

Almond Board of Australia chairman Neale Bennett said a global push to eat healthier food was leading people across the globe to consume more almonds.

"We've always had good markets, but in the past few years, because of the research into the Mediterranean-style diet, including nuts and seeds in your diet and the health benefits of that, that's seen a lot of popularity drive consumption around the world," he said.

"Because of the popularity we've been getting reasonable prices, and because of that people have started to plant more."

Mr Bennett said there was no reason almonds could not be commercially grown in Central Australia so long as there were enough periods of cold weather.

"I can't see why it couldn't work up there," he said.

"Almonds traditionally are a Mediterranean crop, so you've got the climate there; the only thing is whether you can get enough chill hours.

"At the end of the day, you've got to get the chill hours as well as the heat hours."