OUT OF EDEN Ian Crown checks a mangosteen tree on his farm in Puerto Rico. He plans to ship fresh mangosteens to the mainland United States next summer.
Did you know that Mangosteen...
- Is mentioned in Chinese medical accounts dating back to the Ming Dynasty (1368 A.D.-1644 A.D.).?
- Has been used by tens of thousands of people for medicinal purposes over hundreds of years?
- Comes from a tree that can grow to a height of up to 75 feet?
- Is claimed by some to be the best tasting fruit in the world?
- Has been said to have been Queen Victoria’s favorite fruit?
Introduction and Significance
Legend, Geographic origins and Culinary applications.....
There is a story, possibly apocryphal, about Queen Victoria offering a cash reward to anyone who could deliver to her the fabled fruit. Although available in cans and frozen, mangosteens are rarely sold fresh in Western countries except in some Asian grocery stores (and
Tesco).
Without fumigation or irradiation as whole fruit, mangosteens are illegal for importation in commercial volumes into the
United States due to fears that they harbor the Asian
fruit fly which would endanger US crops. Private small volume orders from fruits grown on
Puerto Rico, however, are being filled for American gourmet restaurants who serve the aril pieces as a delicacy dessert.
In the future, new irradiation techniques may allow importation of this delicacy. Products derived from the mangosteen are legally imported into the United States, such as juices, freeze-dried fruit and
nutritional supplements. The fresh fruit is also available in
Australia,
Singapore,
Thailand,
Malaysia,
Vietnam,
Indonesia,
Colombia (especially in Mariquita, a town in Tolima), the
Philippines, Sri Lanka and
Chinatowns of
Victoria and
Vancouver,
British Columbia.
Mangosteen is cultivated and sold on some Hawaiian islands, although presently not exported to the continental United States where it is banned as an insect host (see above). However, Hawaiian growers are working with a Honolulu irradiation facility for future export to the United States mainland. Mangosteen is grown in
Central Africa, particularly the
Democratic Republic of the Congo where it is a popular delicacy. An ultra-tropical tree, the mangosteen must be grown in consistently warm conditions, as exposure to temperatures below 40°F (4°C) will generally kill a mature plant.
Before ripening, the mangosteen shell is fibrous and firm, but becomes soft and easy to pry open when the fruit ripens. To open a mangosteen, the shell is usually broken apart by scoring it with a knife; one holds the fruit in both hands, prying gently with the thumbs until the rind cracks. It is then easy to pull the halves apart along the crack and remove the fruit, taking care with the purple, inky exocarp juice containing pigments that are an avid dye on skin and fabric.
Nutrient content and antioxidant strengthSince 2004, mangosteen has been included among an emerging category of novel
functional foods sometimes called "
superfruits"presumed to have a combination of 1) appealing subjective characteristics, such as taste, fragrance and visual qualities, 2)
nutrient richness, 3)
antioxidant strength and 4) potential impact for lowering risk against human diseases.
When analyzed specifically for its edible
aril, however, mangosteen meets only the first criterion above, as its overall nutrient profile is absent of important content, it contains no
pigmentation (correspondingly, no antioxidant phytochemicals in significant concentration) and there is no scientific evidence of aril constituents having any health properties.
Should
purée or juice from the arils be infused with
exocarp phenolic extracts, mangosteen juice adopts the purple color and
astringency of its exocarp pigments, so must be balanced for taste with sweeteners possibly requiring juices from other fruits.
Forbidden? Not the Mangosteen
By DAVID KARP
Published: August 9, 2006
LAS VEGAS, P.R.
David Karp for The New York Times
HARD TO GROW Mangosteens thrive in the tropics.
David Karp for The New York Times
PERCHED on a dizzyingly steep slope, in a lush landscape dotted with waterfalls and tall bamboo, Ian Crown celebrated the vindication of what he called his madness in a patch in the jungle. He rustled through the thick, glossy leaves of a nine-foot-tall tree, plucked a reddish-purple orb, cut around its equator, twisted off a hemisphere of thick rind, and popped a few delicate, snow-white segments into his mouth.
“I’ve waited so long for this moment,” he said in July, savoring the floral, sweet-tart flavor of one of the most delicious of fruits, and certainly the most hyped: the mangosteen.
For decades it has been famously, tantalizingly unavailable on the United States mainland, but Mr. Crown’s Panoramic Fruit Company has sent several test shipments in the past month to New York and Los Angeles. Sherry Yard, the pastry chef at Spago Beverly Hills, was thrilled to be able to taste a few. “This is like seeing a unicorn,” she said.
By next summer Mr. Crown hopes to be the first producer in decades to ship fresh mangosteens to the mainland commercially.
Native to Indonesia and Malaysia, mangosteen trees require a highly tropical, humid climate, and they cannot be grown commercially in the contiguous United States, although a few determined enthusiasts have coddled them to fruiting in the warmest parts of Florida.
Because fresh mangosteens can harbor insect pests, the Department of Agriculture prohibits their being brought from the main countries that grow them in Southeast Asia, or from Hawaii. (Mangosteens smuggled from Canada, where they are permitted because tropical pests cannot survive there, are occasionally sold in Chinatown.)
But contrary to its reputation as a forbidden fruit, the mangosteen can be imported legally from 18 Caribbean and Central America countries, as well as from Puerto Rico. Until recently, however, no one cultivated them commercially in those areas.
Enter Mr. Crown, 54, a doctor’s son with a bachelor’s degree in agriculture from Cornell University. After working for garden centers he became a commodities broker, and now is a private investor living in Connecticut with his wife and two cats.
In 1994, beguiled by the romance of old coffee mansions in the jungle, he looked to invest in a Puerto Rican farm. While researching crops to provide shade for coffee trees, he became excited by the promise of exotic fruit farming, and bought a 94-acre livestock ranch in the foothills east of Mayagüez, which he planted with mangosteen, rambutan, longan and other Asian fruits.
Mangosteen (Garcinia mangostana) is difficult to propagate by convenient methods like grafting, and when raised from seed takes 8 to 10 years or longer to bear fruit, a major disincentive for aspiring growers. “It’s incredibly irritating,” Mr. Crown said.
After much searching he obtained mangosteen seeds and seedlings from Hawaii and Florida, babied the young trees for two years in a shaded nursery, and planted them on his farm. He then found, to his dismay, that young mangosteens have weak roots. At the time he did not have irrigation, and more than half died. “The attrition was terrible,” he said. “I learned everything the ‘two-by-four in the forehead’ way.”
Things got worse. In 1997 local youths burned most of his plantings to the ground, and in 1998 Hurricane Georges swept through like “a weed whacker combined with a vacuum cleaner,” he said. He was devastated, but started over from scratch.
Now, finally, he is rejoicing in his first real mangosteen harvest. Of the 1,000 mangosteen trees scattered around his property — they would fill 10 acres if planted together — 35 trees bore a total of 200 pounds in July. Future yields should increase exponentially. (Several exotic fruit buffs in his area grow mangosteens, but no one else in Puerto Rico has a commercial orchard.)
Despite their thick rinds, mangosteens need pampering, and even then can develop problems like gamboge, a bitter yellow resin that seeps into the pulp, and translucent flesh, which can be caused by fluctuating rains and high humidity.
When commercial sales start next year, Mr. Crown will send the fruit by FedEx, after federal inspection, to two specialty produce distributors, Baldor in New York and Melissa’s in Los Angeles. “I’d love to be able to put them on the menu,” Sébastien Rouxel, the pastry chef at Per Se, said after tasting samples. Mr. Crown’s venture is the latest chapter in the century-long saga of Americans craving and attempting to grow mangosteen.
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