On a winter morning, we come to Feng Ho Organic Farm in Pingtung County’s Gaoshu Township. The plump abiu fruit hanging from the branches in the orch­ard shimmer golden in the bright sunlight.

These people are optimistic about the future of the abiu, and have invested many years in learning about this fruit. From left: Yen Chung-ruey, Liu Pi-chuan, and Gary Zhuang.

Sweetness from the Amazon

“I recommend eating abiu by cutting it in half and scooping out the flesh with a spoon,” says Feng Ho owner Gary Zhuang. Another approach is to slice up the fruit like an orange and eat the flesh while holding the pieces with the fingers. The milky-white flesh with its jelly-like texture is even more refreshing when eaten cold from the fridge, and seems more like a sweet dessert than a fruit.

The abiu is sweet without tartness, but it seems every­one describes its taste differently. Zhuang says that some people feel it has a flavor like sugar apple, while others say it is like lychee or longan, or even has the scent of honey.

The abiu (Pouteria caimito) was originally cultivated in the tropical rainforest of the Amazon River basin. The first seeds grown in Taiwan were imported from Singa­­pore in 1987 by the Fengshan Tropical Horticultural Experiment Branch (FTHEB) of the Taiwan Agri­cultural Research Institute, under the Council of Agri­culture. Yen Chung-ruey, director of the Smart Agri­culture Center at National Pingtung University of Science and Technology (NPUST), says that the first batch of abiu fruits harvested in Taiwan had an attractive appearance and were very sweet, but were small, weighing only about 200 grams each. Moreover, the trees took two-and-a-half to three years from planting to harvest, and did not bear fruit in winter.

In the 1990s, Yen brought in abiu seeds from the Philippines. Although the fruit that resulted were not as eye-catching as the variety from Singapore, the new variety had other advantages: the fruit could reach 600–900 grams in weight, and the trees took only a year and a half from planting to fruiting. “From the 30 seeds that we got from the Philippines back then, today there are still more than 20 trees alive and well at NPUST, and they continue to flower and bear fruit every year!” says Yen with a smile.

Taiwan has the second-largest land area devoted to growing abiu anywhere in the world, and the fruit has great potential.

The world’s second-largest abiu producer

The abiu bears large fruit of pleasing appearance, and is well adapted to the climate of Central and Southern Taiwan. Furthermore, it suffers few diseases and insect pests, and is relatively easy to manage, requiring only that the fruit be bagged and the soil fertilized.

Liu Pi-chuan, an associate horticulturist at the ­FTHEB, states that at present the abiu is not grown in many countries. In Australia, for example, breeding studies have been carried out but there has been no large-scale cultivation. Considering that in Taiwan, abiu is currently grown on close to 300 hectares of land, it is probably the only country in the world where the fruit is being cultivated on a commercial scale outside its native range.

Gary Zhuang, who jokes that he started growing abiu on the day he started farming, was formerly a manager stationed at a Taiwanese-invested high-tech factory in China. When he decided in his forties to go into farming, he knew that as a rookie he couldn’t compete with veteran farmers, so he figured he would make his entrée through specialty fruit. “Before growing abiu I’d never tasted one or even seen one up close,” he says with a chuckle. When he saw abiu fruits online with their cheerful bright yellow color, and with people describing them as being like jelly, his curiosity was piqued and he bought 160 or so seedlings, which he planted up as an experiment.

Zhuang states that abiu bruise easily and have a short storage life. If they are bruised they tend to get blemishes on their skin, making them less salable, so they are not suited for sale on traditional markets. When Zhuang as a novice farmer harvested his abiu for the first time, he had no idea where he could sell them. so he asked family and friends to draw up lists of names, and shared the joy of the first harvest by sending fruit to these contacts to try out. The abiu’s fine flavor drew much positive feedback, and laid the ground for his focus on the home-delivery gift box market. After 13 years growing abiu, he has many long-established loyal customers.

Over the 30 years since the abiu was introduced into Taiwan, a number of superior cultivars have been ­selected. This is similar to how in the early years dragon fruit often had an unpleasant grassy flavor, but thanks to selective breeding it became increasingly popular in the market, until ultimately consumer demand rose to a level that attracted large-scale commercial planting. Based on her long years of research into the cultivation of novel fruits in Taiwan, Liu Pi-chuan says that the abiu now has the opportunity to follow the same path.

Chilled abiu can be eaten with a spoon, like a sweet dessert.

A treasure chest of tropical fruit

In recent years the star apple (Chrysophyllum cainito), which like the abiu is a member of the Sapotaceae family, has also been attracting increasing attention. It is so named because the seeds are arranged in a star pattern, as seen when the fruit is cut open crosswise. The juice is white in color, and in Vietnam the fruit is called vú sữa, meaning “milky breast.” With growing numbers of Vietnamese immigrants living in Taiwan, the star apple has also come to be known as “milk fruit” (niunai guo) in Chinese.

One way to eat a star apple is to cut it in half and scoop out the flesh with a spoon; or you can try eating it the Vietnamese way: roll the fruit between your hands, then make a small hole and suck out the flesh. As it slides into your mouth, you will be able to directly appreciate why it has the name of “milk fruit.”

In fact, the star apple was introduced into Taiwan way back in 1924. Other tropical fruits such as the canistel (Pouteria campechiana), the durian and the sapodilla (Manil­kara zapota) were also introduced during the Japan­ese colonial era. Writer and illustrator Wang Jui-min, who has devoted himself to the study of tropical plants since his university days, says that Japan made Taiwan an important base for research into tropical plants because of the climate here.

Wang relates that the tropical fruits that were intro­duced at that time have continued to be grown here and there in Central and Southern Taiwan. As a child he saw several kinds of such fruit for sale at flower markets in Taichung, but always in small numbers. However, in the 1990s, Southeast Asians who came to Taiwan as migrant workers or as long-term immigrants discovered that Taiwan had fruits from their native countries, and started to buy them, which encouraged more local farmers to begin growing these fruits.

As Southeast-Asian immigrants stayed longer in Taiwan, some of them began growing fruits and vege­tables from their homelands on farmland owned by their Taiwanese families. Pham Thi Thu, a Vietnamese woman living in Pingtung County, is one example.

Pham says with a smile, “When I lived in Vietnam I worked as a seamstress and as a teacher, but I never grew anything.” But after marrying into a Taiwanese family, she noticed that fellow Vietnamese women living nearby missed the fruits of their homeland, giving her the idea to try her hand at growing some. She has experienced typhoons that virtually wiped out her saplings, but the optimistic Pham has always put a smile on her face and tried again, and through more than a decade of experimentation has gradually increased the scale of her opera­tion. On the day of our visit, Pham’s orchard contains a variety of tropical fruits, including star apples, rambutan, durian, and jackfruit, making us feel as if we are in a Southeast-Asian country. Pham says that whenever her Vietnamese friends visit they are very happy, because being surrounded by these famil­iar fruits gives them a feeling of returning home.

Novel fruits bring new opportunities

These fruits rarely appear for sale on Taiwan’s tradi­tional markets. But thanks to word of mouth among migrant workers and long-term immigrants, and with sales through livestreaming and through outlets that are popular with Southeast-Asian residents, such as Southeast-­Asian specialty stores or the ASEAN Square mall in Taichung, demand outstrips supply.

Unlike the sweet fruits preferred by Taiwanese, those from Southeast Asia mostly have an additional sour tang to them. Wang Jui-min notes that the climate in those countries is intensely hot, and a sour taste stimulates the appetite. Some Southeast-Asian fruits are both sour and astringent, making them hard for Taiwanese to get used to. But in fact many of these fruits have been cultivated in Southeast Asia for much longer than in Taiwan, and a rich dietary culture has developed around them.

For example, people in Taiwan are in the habit of eating bananas directly as fresh fruit, but in Southeast Asia people prefer to eat them cooked, and prepare them in many different ways, such as deep-fried, made into a sweet soup with sago, as a filling in wrapped dumplings, or roasted on skewers. Each approach offers a different flavor. Meanwhile, in Southeast Asia the amba­rella (Spondias dulcis), which tastes sour and astringent if eaten raw, is usually pickled with salt or chili peppers. When prepared this way it doesn’t taste at all like fruit, but rather like a cold vegetable dish, and its tart and piquant taste makes it a great appetizer. To try out these distinctive flavors in Taiwan, you need only visit such places as Taichung’s ASEAN Square, Taipei’s “Little ­Manila” on the east side of Zhongshan North Road Section 3, or ­Muzha Market in Taipei’s Wenshan District.

Wang Jui-min observes that Taiwan’s plant nurseries are highly skilled and are able to grow all kinds of fruits, and in recent years Taiwan’s winters have been growing shorter, making it easier for tropical fruits to survive. Local production began with fruits from Southeast Asia because it is near to Taiwan, but people have also begun to bring in plants from South and Central America. In Taiwan Wang has already enjoyed a fruit that is widespread in Latin America: the “ice-cream bean” (Inga edulis etc.). We look forward to seeing even more novel fruits take root in Taiwan, to enrich the offerings for our taste buds and add to Taiwan’s reputation as the “fruit kingdom.”

Gary Zhuang insists on farming organically, and the land repays him with sweet, delicious fruit.

This tree laden with “milk fruit” is the result of unceasing effort by Pham Thi Thu over more than a decade.

The star apple was introduced into Taiwan under Japanese rule. In recent years, thanks to consumer demand from Southeast-Asian residents, more and more people have begun to cultivate this fruit.

A star apple is shaped much like a regular apple, and when it is cut open the seeds form a star pattern. Because its juice is milky white, it is also called “milk fruit.”

Tamarind

Rambutan

Jackfruit

Sapodilla

Taiwan’s rich soil and outstanding cultivation techniques enable all kinds of tropical fruits to thrive here, opening up people’s minds to the possibilities for new fruit flavors.