Nass­er Khan

In this the 18th in­stal­ment of the con­tin­u­ing se­ries, Food for Thought/Grow & Eat Lo­cal, we fo­cus on the mamey sapote/mamey ap­ple fruit. Mam­mea Amer­i­cana is com­mon­ly known by sev­er­al names in­clud­ing: mam­mee, mamey ap­ple, San­to Domin­go apri­cot, trop­i­cal apri­cot, or South Amer­i­can apri­cot. In T&T, it is com­mon­ly re­ferred to as mamey ap­ple but al­so as mamey sapote. It is a trop­i­cal ever­green tree of the fam­i­ly Gut­tifer­ae which would make it a rel­a­tive of the man­gos­teen.

Food for Thought/Grow and Eat Lo­cal seeks to in­form about the 149 crops that are grown in T&T (not count­ing the va­ri­eties with­in many of them) which are de­pict­ed on two charts with a pho­to of each crop in al­pha or­der giv­ing the lo­cal and sci­en­tif­ic names and were spon­sored by First Cit­i­zens.

The mod­el has been du­pli­cat­ed in Bar­ba­dos, St Lu­cia and St Vin­cent and ef­forts are un­der­way to do so in Ja­maica and Guyana. Copies have been dis­trib­uted to all schools and li­braries. In­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing their avail­abil­i­ty: email fruit­stt@live.com

In some Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries Mam­mea Amer­i­cana is re­ferred to as yel­low mamey (Span­ish: mamey amar­il­lo) in or­der to dis­tin­guish it from the un­re­lat­ed but sim­i­lar look­ing Poute­ria sapota, whose fruit is usu­al­ly called red mamey (Span­ish: mamey col­orado or mamey ro­jo).

Mamey ap­ple is na­tive to the West In­dies and north­ern South Amer­i­ca. It was record­ed as grow­ing near Dari�n, Pana­ma in 1514, and in 1529 was in­clud­ed by Oviedo in his Re­view of the Fruits of the New World. It was then sub­se­quent­ly in­tro­duced in­to var­i­ous re­gions in the Old World: West Africa, par­tic­u­lar­ly Sier­ra Leone, Zanz­ibar, South­east Asia and Hawaii.

The mamey ap­ple tree is con­fined to trop­i­cal or sub­trop­i­cal cli­mates and in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, the species can be found grow­ing up to an al­ti­tude of 1,000 m. It thrives best in rich, deep and well-drained soil, but is very adap­tive; it al­so grows on lime­stone in Ja­maica and the Ba­hamas, and on an­cient coral bedrock in Bar­ba­dos as well as coral cays off the coast of Flori­da.

The mamey ap­ple tree can grow to 18 m (69 ft) high, its up­right branch­es form­ing a dis­tinc­tive oval head with dark-green fo­liage. Flow­ers of the mamey ap­ple are fra­grant with four or six white petals and are borne ei­ther singly or in clus­ters of two or three, on short stalks. All parts of the plant ex­ude yel­low la­tex when cut. Mamey ap­ple trees are of­ten used as wind breaks.

The mamey ap­ple is a berry, though it is of­ten mis­in­ter­pret­ed to be a drupe. Fruits are large and round, four-ten inch­es (10-25 cm) in di­am­e­ter, with a grey-brown thick rind cov­er­ing yel­low or­ange pulp. When ripe, the pulp is firm and slight­ly juicy, with a pleas­ant taste rem­i­nis­cent of apri­cot or peach.

he pulp is not fi­brous and can have var­i­ous tex­tures (crispy or juicy, firm or ten­der). Gen­er­al­ly the smell of ripe mamey ap­ple fruits is pleas­ant and ap­petis­ing. When un­ripe, the fruit is hard and heavy, but its flesh slight­ly soft­ens when ful­ly ripe. Be­neath the skin, there is a white, dry mem­brane, whose taste is as­trin­gent.

Small fruits con­tain a sin­gle seed, while larg­er ones might have up to four. The seeds are brown, rough, oval and around six cm (2.4 in) long. The juice of the seed leaves an in­deli­ble stain.

Mamey ap­ple is usu­al­ly prop­a­gat­ed by seed, but can al­so be graft­ed. Graft­ed trees bear fruit soon­er, stay small­er, are her­maph­ro­dite, and have pre­dictable fruit qual­i­ty. The seeds ger­mi­nate slow­ly, tak­ing from 40-260 days. Fresh seeds have a ger­mi­na­tion per­cent­age of close to 100 per cent. Trees can be trans­plant­ed to the field af­ter one-two years, when they are a foot (30 cm) or more in height.

Seedling trees be­gin to bear fruits in six-eight years, graft­ed trees in three-five years from plant­i­ng. Fruits ripen from Ju­ly through Sep­tem­ber and fall to the ground when they are ripe. They can al­so be picked when they reach full size and show an ex­ter­nal colour change from green­ish brown to or­ange brown. A ma­ture tree can pro­duce over 250 fruits per year.

Though ed­i­ble, this fruit has re­ceived lit­tle at­ten­tion world­wide. The raw flesh can be served in fruit sal­ads, or with wine, sug­ar or cream, es­pe­cial­ly in Ja­maica. In the Ba­hamas, the flesh is first put in salt­ed wa­ter to re­move its bit­ter­ness, be­fore cook­ing it with much sug­ar to make a jam. The flesh can al­so be con­sumed stewed. The pulp con­tains pectin thus mak­ing it use­ful in the prepa­ra­tion of jam. See http://www.sim­plytrini­cook­ing.com/what-have-i-been-up-to-en­joy­ing-ah-mamey-ap­ple/.

Var­i­ous parts of the tree con­tain in­sec­ti­ci­dal sub­stances, es­pe­cial­ly the seed ker­nel. In T&T, the grat­ed seeds are mixed with co­conut oil to treat head lice and chig­gers. In a sim­i­lar way, the bark gum is melt­ed with fat in Ja­maica and Mex­i­co and then ap­plied to feet to re­pel chig­gers or fleas on an­i­mals. The same ef­fect is al­so ob­tained from in­fu­sions of half-ripe fruits. In Puer­to Ri­co, mamey ap­ple leaves are wrapped around young toma­to plants to keep mole crick­ets and cut­worms away.

In the Vir­gin Is­lands, the tan­nin from the bark is used to tan leather. The tim­ber is heavy and hard, yet easy to work; it has re­ceived, how­ev­er, on­ly lim­it­ed com­mer­cial in­ter­est.

Per­haps one rea­son for the un­der­util­i­sa­tion of the mamey ap­ple fruit is its po­ten­tial tox­i­c­i­ty. When eat­ing the pulp care should be tak­en not to eat that part of the pulp close to the seed since it is very bit­ter. Rur­al folk in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic have some doubt of the whole­some­ness of mamey flesh while the Ba­hami­an prac­tice of soak­ing the pulp in salt­ed wa­ter may be a safe­ty pre­cau­tion in as much as bit­ter­ness is not on­ly dis­liked but dis­trust­ed. The old Ja­maican cus­tom of steep­ing the fruit pulp in wine might al­so be con­sid­ered a safe­guard.

It has been re­port­ed that, while the de­li­cious mamey ap­ple has formed part of the di­et of the in­hab­i­tants of the Caribbean Is­lands for many gen­er­a­tions, it is well known that this fruit pro­duces dis­com­fort, es­pe­cial­ly in the di­ges­tive sys­tem, in some per­sons. It is al­so re­port­ed that a con­cen­trat­ed ex­tract of the fresh fruit can prove fa­tal­ly tox­ic to guinea pigs, and was al­so found poi­so­nous to dogs and cats. The ex­tract was made from the ed­i­ble por­tion on­ly.

http://www.sim­plytrini­cook­ing.com/what-have-i-been-up-to-en­joy­ing-ah-mamey-ap­ple/

Here in T&T we tend to grav­i­tate to­wards fruits and foods that are not lo­cal. Es­ti­mates are that our food im­port bill is near TT$5 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly and grow­ing. Did you know that in the 1960s the Mac­queripe/Tuck­er Val­ley was lush with cit­rus and ba­nana fields pro­duc­ing more than enough to sup­ply the na­tion?

In oth­er fer­tile ar­eas oth­er crops were pro­lif­ic. Oil cen­tric­i­ty, in­dus­tri­al­i­sa­tion and non-agri­cul­tur­al busi­ness have es­sen­tial­ly put paid sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor. It is crit­i­cal that we as a na­tion en­gage and sup­port the res­ur­rec­tion and re­vival of lo­cal food pro­duc­tion (eg in schools), pro­cess­ing and con­sump­tion; as a coun­try, we must place greater em­pha­sis on food sov­er­eign­ty as a mat­ter of ur­gent at­ten­tion.

For ex­am­ple, bet­ter roads are need­ed as high­light­ed in the Guardian re­cent­ly http://www.guardian.co.tt/news/2016-06-14/cou­va-farm­ers-want-road-fixed.

Vis­it the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries' web­site at http://www.agri­cul­ture.gov.tt/

This se­ries is writ­ten in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Cyn­thra Per­sad, re­tired di­rec­tor of Re­search, Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture.