Not impressed with ACHACHA fruit

Mark

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I purchased some Achacha fruit the other day so I could try them and see if they were worth growing in the backyard. I don't see them for sale very often but for the past few years the trees and fruit have been marketed strongly as a potential new consumer winner so I was keen to see how they tasted.

Unfortunately, I can't say I was overly impressed and although the taste of the Achacha was quite nice and similar to a lychee/custard apple there was nothing to encourage me buying a tree for the backyard.

The fruit was easy enough to open and is done by pressing a finger or thumb nail into the skin then breaking the fruit in half revealing the pulp, which surrounds an oversized seed. The disappointment comes when you pop the fruit in your mouth and realise just how little pulp there is to eat. Also, there is a small segment of seed that annoyingly breaks away from the main seed during eating so you need to be careful not to swallow it.

Overall, I reckon there are many other fruit trees to grow in the garden which give a better return than the Achacha and I certainly won't be buying anymore fruit from the store. I suppose if you had plenty of space growing an Achacha tree would be an interesting exotic as the fruit does taste quite nice, however, you'd need quite a lot of produce to get a worthwhile feed.

achacha fruit in hand.jpg


achacha fruit in half open pulp.jpg


achacha fruit seed and pulp.jpg
 

bearded1

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Hi Mark
I did the same thing a few weeks ago and had similar thoughts. I also tried Jaboticaba a few weeks ago and really liked them, but according to the people who were selling the trees at our local market they take 7 years to fruit. That's a long time to wait. I might need to do some research into whether or not they can be grafted.

bearded1
 

Mark

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Hi Mark
I did the same thing a few weeks ago and had similar thoughts. I also tried Jaboticaba a few weeks ago and really liked them, but according to the people who were selling the trees at our local market they take 7 years to fruit. That's a long time to wait. I might need to do some research into whether or not they can be grafted.

bearded1
I haven't tried Jaboticaba aren't they like a big grape?

I dont mind waiting for fruit trees to mature (even 7+ years) but Achacha just wouldn't be worth growing no matter how fast it grew to fruiting stages :)
 

Mark

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gees, not much to eat there hey, are they sold by the Kilo?
yeah, I can't recall how much they were because there wasn't a price on the shelf and I just threw them in with the rest of my groceries then forgot to check what they cost when I went through the checkout :rolleyes: maybe it's good I didn't see the price :D
 

Susan_A

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Hi everyone,

I know this thread is a few years old now, but I thought I'd throw in my comment anyway.

I saw some achacha fruit yesterday in Woolworths, and as I'd never seen them before (or even heard of them), I thought I'd give them a try.

They were $10 a kilo, so I got about 300 grams, which was about 10 of them.

When I got home, I looked them up on the Internet - lots of crap saying they are the next 'superfood'. (Eye-roll...) If I had known that, I would have steered clear of them. Anything that is touted as a 'superfood' usually means that someone is pushing something with the sole purpose of making a fast buck. Even on Wikipedia, the info is not much more than an advertisement for Queensland-grown achacha.

So Mark, you're not impressed? I'd buy them again - if they were $2 a kilo...

My mother and daughter both love mangosteens, and the achacha are closely related and taste quite similar. Mangosteens here are expensive and I've never found a fresh one in Australia and I've only ever had good ones in places like Singapore. I'm sure they'd love achacha, apart from the price and the fact that you only get about 1/4 of a mouthful per fruit, and at $10 a kilo, that probably works out at... well, lets work it out, I just weighed one, it was 32 grams, so cost 1000/32 = 31.25 cents. The skin and seed weighed 21 grams, so that gave 11 grams of flesh. In other words, 31.25 cents for 11 grams of flesh, or close to $29 per kilo.

Maybe I'll try and grow a seed in the back-yard, but no great loss if it doesn't grow. There's plenty of better fruit around.

Susan
 

Mark

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My mother and daughter both love mangosteens
Same here Susan. Mangosteens were definitely a favorite of mine over in Thailand - better than all other fruits (even their mangos) although the pineapples were good I suppose.

I've been keen to buy a mangosteen tree to grow here but they're not easy to get hold of!
 

ClissAT

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There's a rare tropical fruits nursery down near Coffs or Byron.
There's also a tropical fruits nursery near Nambour, also one at Maleny & one I heard of that grows really rare fruits up in Far Nth Qld.
I see these things as I hunt for stuff on the net, but since I don't have the good soil to grow them here, I never take more than cursory notice.
I did buy some tropical fruit trees from some people who are based near Landsborough but when I asked if I could go to their nursery they said No, its all mail order.

Regarding eating the fruit, I remember when the man went around touting the Achacha & I was less than impressed because he wanted $16kg for that half mouthful of flesh. I do see Mangosteens each year but again there is so much wasted weight in them & they are expensive too.
There's another fruit that looks like a much larger Achacha but its probably the same inside. These fruits from the Asian archipelagos have evolved through time to have their seeds spread by monkeys mostly. So the fruit only wants to give a small reward, hence the small amount of flesh around a very big seed.

The fruits that we are used to eating like stone fruits, mangoes, pomes, etc that have a large amount of flesh around very small seeds have been selectively bred over many hundreds or even 1000's of years by mostly European farmers or in the case of the mango by sub-continent tribes because they have very short bearing seasons. The Asian tribes didn't feel the need to select the fleshiest fruits because they were so plentiful. Just pick up more of them because they bear for a longer time.

Imagine what a selectively bred Achacha or Mangosteen could be like if it had 100's of years breeding behind it? It would be the size of a soursop or breadfruit with several handfuls of sweet flesh.
Just think about how blueberries have changed since they came to market 25-30yrs ago or how big cherries are now compared to just a few yrs ago.
 
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AndyH

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Oh no, I literally just bought one online less than an hour ago, then saw this:(
 

austozzie

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Oh no, I literally just bought one online less than an hour ago, then saw this:(

sorry to but in on everyone's conversations, but it seems that no one here has tried soaking the (clean) skins in water. Makes a delicious and healthy drink (strain off skins when water has changed colour - you'll know when) and is the main reason I buy as yes, there's not a great deal of flesh on the actual fruit itself.
 
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