Developers of a new app hope it will help unite Indigenous bushfoods businesses and increase knowledge-sharing to help them leverage the growing demand for native ingredients in recent years.

Investments in Indigenous-incorporated food businesses continue across the country, prompting University of Queensland researchers to create a native food value chain that combines Indigenous knowledge, science and technology.

The project from UQ's renowned ARC Training Centre for Uniquely Australian Foods aimed to ensure Aboriginal businesses and communities benefit from the thriving industry through an app that allows communities to upload their knowledge on Country, from raw bush materials to how information on bushfoods is communicated to consumers.

ARC director Professor, Yasmina Sultanbawa, said her team had been developing the app with its Indigenous Enterprise Group and software development company.

"This is a global first - enabling communities to take the lead, get a premium quality product and access to national and international markets," she said.

The value chain covers any bushfood product from conception, through to production and delivery, and the project's aim was to increase benefit-sharing agreements between Indigenous businesses and communities so they can upscale as demand increases.

Indigenous Enterprise Group chair Jagera, Yugambeh and Githabul woman Madonna Thomson said the rest of the world was realising the commercial and economic viability of bushfood.

"Our communities need to be shaping this industry or there's a risk they could become marginalised as others begin to buy and grow native plants on a larger scale," she said.

"It's not just about how much money people can make but recognising the importance of Australia's Indigenous communities and the cultural connection they have to the bush.

"This project will create equity, provenance and protection for our communities and businesses that harvest native bushfoods."

Professor Sultanbawa said it was exciting to see the project come to fruition.

"I'm very happy to have communities we have worked with over the past decade joining us on this journey and putting our Indigenous communities on the map," she said.

UQ's latest initiative follows a landmark report by the National Farmers' Federation in June that underscored the need for better engagement with Indigenous communities to unlock the economic potential of Indigenous agriculture.

NFF acting president David Jochinke said First Nations people could help agriculture become Australia's next $100 billion industry.

"There is a very real and direct connection between reaching growth ambitions, the economic empowerment of Indigenous peoples, and Closing the Gap across the full range of social outcomes," he said.

Dr Sultanbawa said legal and social science researchers, and ARC partners, were continuously working with Indigenous communities to undertake enrichment planting and develop enterprises that give them ownership and control.

In 2002, Professor Sultanbawa worked with Aboriginal communities in East Arnhem Land and Delye Outstation in the Northern Territory to research the green plum.

Traditionally used as food and medicine in Aboriginal communities across the Top End, the green plum was very popular with the children and elderly.

"The green plum has so much goodness, it could one day help with dietary issues like the triple burden of malnutrition – undernutrition, obesity and micronutrient deficiencies – known as hidden hunger," Dr Sultanbawa said.

"Our collaborators at the Aboriginal-owned Gulkula nursery in Gove, East Arnhem Land, have only recently successfully propagated the green plum – and we believe this is the first time the plum has been propagated anywhere in the world."

UQ's research found sensory qualities of the green plum were outstanding, while its flesh was high in protein, dietary fibre, folate, potassium and the fruit a good source of magnesium, calcium and phosphorous.

The green plum belongs to the family Anacardiaceae which contains well-known commercialised fruit including mango, cashew apple and pistachio nuts.