Growing Mamey Sapote in Sarawak, Borneo

Morgan scratching the skin of Sarawak grown mamey sapote fruit to check whether it is ready to eat.  A ripe fruit will show a papaya orange red flesh.

Three weeks ago, I saw an unusual fruit at the Kubah Ria jungle produce market.  I get to know the name of the fruit from farmer, Morgan Chua.  The name is mamey sapote.  This fruit, a native fruit of Cuba, attracted a lot of attention from tourists and the locals.  They will snap pictures, buy it to taste this foreign fruit, perhaps, grow it in their gardens.
Most are snapped up.  I was lucky this time to capture the image of this fruit in video before they are gone.

 According to Morgan, he planted this fruit tree in his parents' land in the outskirts of Kuching city after a friend gave him a plant he brought back from Cuba.  It was washed clean of soil and wrapped with a piece of wet tissue and an aluminium foil.

This plant grew into a tree six years later and had been producing fruits for the fifth consecutive year.  A tree will yield more than a hundred fruits with a fruit weighing an average of 1.5 kilo to a maximum weight of 2.5 kilo a fruit.  It will take the fruit 4-5 months to mature after flowering.
A ripe fruit is detected by scratching the skin.  The flesh will show a papaya orange red colour when the fruit is ripe.  The texture of this fruit is smooth. The fruit is ready for eating after 3 days of harvesting it. It is cut in half, the seed removed and the flesh scooped out with a spoon.

Morgan told me his foreign customers had seen a similar fruit in Hawaii but it was very much smaller.  The Cuban specie is large.  Morgan attributed the quality of the fruit to Cuba's advanced organic farming technology.

Many attempts had been made to plant this fruit tree by seed propagation by other interested fruit growers but with no positive results.

This fruit is not seasonal.  It bears fruit the whole year through. This fruit is rich in potassium, carbohydrates, fiber, sugar, protein, vit A, vit C, calcium, iron, Vit B6, magnesium, manganese, riboflavin, niacin and vit E.

Morgan shows off  the last remaining mamey sapote with his customer who bought it.