Nass­er Khan

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). These crops 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. For in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing their avail­abil­i­ty: email fruit­stt@live.com

It is crit­i­cal that we as a na­tion en­gage and sup­port the res­ur­rec­tion and re­vival of lo­cal food pro­duc­tion (eg, in schools) and con­sump­tion. As a coun­try, we must place greater em­pha­sis on food sov­er­eign­ty as a mat­ter of ur­gent at­ten­tion.

In this the 20th in­stal­ment of the con­tin­u­ing se­ries, we fo­cus on the de­li­cious fruit pom­me­cythere, Spon­dias cytherea, a pop­u­lar fruit be­long­ing to the Anac­ar­diaceae fam­i­ly which in­cludes man­go and cashew. The ep­i­thet "cytherea: is de­rived from the is­land of Cythere now known as Tahi­ti. This species is na­tive to Mel­one­sia through Poly­ne­sia and now can be found through­out trop­i­cal Asia, the Caribbean, Cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca, Aus­tralia and parts of Africa. Of in­ter­est is that the genus Spon­dias gives rise to two ma­jor groups of fruit, each with its dis­tinct cen­tre of ori­gin; Pom­me­cythere from Poly­ne­sia and the Plums (or Mom­bins) from Trop­i­cal Amer­i­ca.

Pom­me­cythere was first in­tro­duced in­to the Caribbean re­gion, to Ja­maica in 1782 and then again by Cap­tain Bligh in 1791. In the Caribbean, pom­me­cythere is grown pri­mar­i­ly as a tree in home gar­dens and as an in­ter­crop with co­coa. In Trinidad, how­ev­er, small or­chards of pom­me­cythere have been es­tab­lished to cater for those pe­ri­ods when man­go is out of sea­son (dur­ing the lat­ter part of the year).

This fruit is un­usu­al since it is called by sev­er­al names with­in the West In­dies. In Grena­da, which has a vi­brant ex­port trade for this fruit, it is called gold­en ap­ple, but al­so re­ferred to as June plum and Jew plum. In Guyana, it is known as gold­en ap­ple. Be­sides T&T, the name pom­me­cythere is used in St Lu­cia and Do­mini­ca. In South-East Asia it is known as am­barel­la.

As the fruit ma­tures, the dark green skin colour turns bright yel­low to or­ange when fruit is ripe. Ripe fruit fall from the tree. This at­trac­tive gold­en colour and crisp tex­ture of the fruit is per­haps why it is named gold­en ap­ple.

The seed is known as a stone and is char­ac­terised by nu­mer­ous spines that ra­di­ate out­wards, up­wards and down­wards. These spines pro­trude in­to the flesh. In­side this spiny re­cep­ta­cle is lo­cat­ed be­tween four-five seeds.

Pom­me­cythere flour­ish­es in the hu­mid trop­ics and per­form best where the an­nu­al rain­fall ex­ceeds 1,500mm. Al­though trees will grow and pro­duce fruit in area with an an­nu­al rain­fall of less than 1000mm, fruits so pro­duced are small and in­fe­ri­or. Wind pro­tec­tion is re­quired since branch­es are brit­tle and eas­i­ly bro­ken (snapped) es­pe­cial­ly when laden with fruit. Pom­me­cythere trees go dor­mant for a short pe­ri­od af­ter fruit pro­duc­tion which co­in­cides with the ear­ly part of the dry sea­son. Dur­ing this pe­ri­od, leaves turn bright yel­low, senesce and fall, leav­ing a bare tree. Flow­er­ing is ini­ti­at­ed with­in a two-month pe­ri­od af­ter ini­tial leaf fall.

Pom­me­cythere is eas­i­ly prop­a­gat­ed via seed even though graft­ing and root­ing of cut­tings have proven suc­cess­ful. The pom­me­cythere tree is medi­um to large-sized which can be grown in trop­i­cal and frost-free sub-trop­i­cal ar­eas of the world. The fruit is a drupe and is borne on long stalks in dan­gling bunch­es av­er­ag­ing be­tween sev­en and 12 fruit per clus­ter. Ma­ture fruit are oval to round with a thin but tough skin.

When the bark of the tree is wound­ed, the tree re­sponds with its de­fense mech­a­nism and pro­duces its yel­low, vis­cous gum which dark­en and hard­en with time. This gummed area if large can es­sen­tial­ly iso­late this por­tion of the trunk or branch from the rest of the tree thus be­ing starved of nu­tri­ents. Ear­ly re­moval of the gummed por­tion of the tree (es­sen­tial­ly tree surgery) can save the tree from dy­ing.

A re­lat­ed species of pom­me­cythere is con­sid­ered by some botanists as mere­ly a wild form of S cythere and is known as Spon­dias pin­na­ta. This dwarf pom­me­cythere is cul­ti­vat­ed from the Hi­malayas to the An­daman Is­lands, and now com­mon­ly cul­ti­vat­ed through­out south-east Asia and Malaysia.

A dwarf se­lec­tion of pom­me­cythere was in­tro­duced in­to Trinidad from Thai­land in the ear­ly 1980s by a pri­vate hor­ti­cul­tur­ist and its pop­u­lar­i­ty as a pot­ted bear­ing plant has grown. While it is not cer­tain whether this se­lec­tion is in­deed S pin­na­ta, some sim­i­lar­i­ties ex­ist such as smooth twigs, leaves that are not toothed and the small size of the fruit.

This dwarf se­lec­tion now oc­curs through­out the Caribbean where small or­chards have been es­tab­lished for com­mer­cial pur­pos­es. One char­ac­ter­is­tic of this dwarf se­lec­tion is that is bears fruit year-round once ad­e­quate amounts of wa­ter are avail­able. Dwarf pom­me­cythere fruits taste the same as the stan­dard fruits. Fruit skins are soft­er in tex­ture and there­fore peel­ing of fruits be­fore cook­ing is un­nec­es­sary.

Read­i­ly prop­a­gat­ed from seed (emerg­ing seedlings are true dwarfs), green fruits can be har­vest­ed six months af­ter seedling trans­plant. This dwarf tree can be plant­ed in large pots or plant­ed in the ground; it does not re­quire much space thus mak­ing it an at­trac­tive se­lec­tion to home gar­dens with lim­it­ed space.

Re­search stud­ies con­duct­ed in Grena­da (MoA and Car­di) on the ef­fects of graft­ing stan­dard pom­me­cythere on the dwarf se­lec­tion have shown that trees re­mained with a com­pact habit af­ter three years and large fruit could be har­vest­ed af­ter two years as com­pared to nor­mal bear­ing habit of bear­ing with­in three years.

Fruits can be eat­en in its green state (tex­ture of flesh is crisp) or when ripe (juicy, soft and very sweet). Fruit con­tains high Vi­t­a­min C and ripe fruit have high su­crose con­tent. Green fruit are peeled, chopped and cooked as a veg­etable (cur­ried), used in a chow or the flesh re­moved from the seed and made in­to pick­les and fresh chut­neys. Half-ripe fruit are al­so stewed. A pom­me­cythere juice is one of the most de­li­cious and re­fresh­ing there is.

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.

Here is a quick and sim­ple pom­me­cythere chut­ney recipe you can try:

IN­GRE­DI­ENTS

2lbs/12 medi­um-sized green pom­me­cythere

4-6 cloves gar­lic fine­ly chopped

2 tb­sp chadon beni/cilantro fine­ly chopped

1/2 tb­sp salt

1/2 medi­um scotch bon­net pep­per fine­ly chopped

1 tb­sp white vine­gar (op­tion­al).

?

METHOD

�2 Peel and wash the fruit. Cut the flesh of the fruit off the spiny seed and chop in a food proces­sor or grate the fruit fine­ly on a grater.

�2 In a bowl, mix every­thing thor­ough­ly.