1/8/2024 0 Comments Grant knighthood to![]() Department of Agriculture requires all mangosteens imported to the U.S. It turns out, the answer is yes, particularly when imported from Southeast Asia. Unauthorized use is prohibited.Īnd even if you can figure out how to balance the mangosteen farming/harvesting/shipping equation and can get the weather to cooperate, there are still big questions to resolve, like whether it carries invasive pests. That leaves the easily bruised fruit beginning to degrade the moment it leaves the field. Mangosteens are non-climateric ripeners, meaning that after they’re picked, they never ripen further. Its tree can take a decade to start fruiting, the fruit can’t withstand any cold temperatures, and even then, its yield is uncertain. The mangosteen, however, has almost none of these attributes. Fruits like strawberries, lemons, and pineapples are the lucky one percent-the ones endowed with good pedigree and bred for their ability to survive the perils of the produce aisle. Every fruit and vegetable in the modern supermarket meets this criteria. They need to last a few days before going moldy on the kitchen counter or the back of the refrigerator. They must ripen fast and ship well, without bruising too much. ![]() The short answer is that fruits, just like people, have a resumé. Of the thousands, even millions, of edible plants on Earth, why do our supermarkets feature the same few, like apples, oranges, and bananas? And to understand why, you first have to understand why we eat the fruits that we do. Those “difficulties” turned out to be a supreme understatement. “Of course, I immediately wanted to see this fruit on the American market, but there were many difficulties to be overcome.” “The meat has the consistency of a greengage plum but a flavor which is indescribably delicious,” Fairchild wrote after encountering the fruit on the Indian Ocean island of Java in 1896. And amid the thousands of plants he officially introduced to the U.S.-avocados, nectarines, dates, pistachios, Egyptian cotton-he called the mangosteen his favorite. had few native crops of its own in hopes of finding new ones to bring back. It’s small, about the size of a fist, with a deep purple and leathery skin that hides about six to eight white and slimy wedges.Īs part of his work for the USDA, Fairchild traveled to dozens of countries at a time when the U.S. Department of Agriculture, that I realized the mangosteen was nothing like a mango. It wasn’t until I started digging into the journals and diaries of David Fairchild, a 19th and 20th century food explorer for the U.S. (Like anyone, I initially assumed it was a cousin of the mango with a slightly different name for some Ellis Island-like reason no one could remember). ![]() In fact, until about three years ago, I had never even heard of a mangosteen. I had no idea how long that dream had been around. markets, and from there, increasing “exponentially.” Here was a man, Karp wrote, finally realizing the long elusive dream of bringing fresh mangosteens to North America. Back then, Crown’s company, Panoramic Fruit Company, was on the verge of harvesting his first 200 pounds of mangosteens in Puerto Rico to sell in U.S. The story’s writer, David Karp, talked to Ian Crown, who was at the time America’s leading mangosteen grower (because he was America’s only mangosteen grower). In 2006, the New York Times reported on the difficult process of growing mangosteens in the U.S., or anywhere outside of the warm and well-watered belt of the tropics where the fruit is native. And yet, not only would you be wrong, but you'd be wading into the complex world of fruit logistics that says as much about the mangosteen as it does about us. And why is that? You would think that the trappings of the 21st century-air travel, industrial fertilizer, climate control-would be the keys to taking this tropical fruit global. The mangosteen has a rather illustrious history for a fruit that most Americans have never heard of. It was, whether true or not, enough to earn the mangosteen the widely-accepted title as " the queen of fruits." The fruit spoiled so fast that someone started the rumor around 1890 that Queen Victoria would grant knighthood to anyone who brought her one. And that's not just one opinion, it's the consensus of farmers, explorers, and royalty going back centuries.Įuropean colonists stumbled upon the small purple tree fruit in Southeast Asia, where they found it to be a delicious mix of lychee, peach, strawberry, and pineapple flavors. If you’ve never tasted a mangosteen, then you’ve never tasted the most exquisite fruit of the tropics.
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