The world's largest tree fruit can weigh as much as a grown adult's suitcase: 50 kilograms
A single jackfruit can reach 90 centimetres long and 50 kilograms, the biggest fruit any tree bears. It sprouts straight from the trunk, holds up to 500 seed-filled bulbs, and smells strongly when ripe. Yet an estimated three quarters of the harvest spoils, because once picked the giant fruit goes off fast.
The tree, Artocarpus heterophyllus, belongs to the mulberry family and probably originated in India's Western Ghats. Its genus name joins Greek words for bread and fruit, and the species name means variously leaved, a nod to young trees' three-lobed leaves that later become elliptical. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck described it in 1789 from a specimen gathered by Philibert Commerson. Archaeological finds suggest people in India were cultivating it some 3,000 to 6,000 years ago.
The English name traces through the Portuguese jaca, recorded by Garcia de Orta in 1563, back to the Malayalam chakka and a Proto-Dravidian root for fruit. In 1984 Ralph Randles Stewart floated a different idea: that it honoured William Jack, a Scottish botanist with the East India Company. The evergreen can grow to 30 metres and bears flowers directly on its trunk and thick branches, a habit called cauliflory. Pollination involves a remarkable three-way partnership between the tree, a fungus and a gall midge that feeds on the fungal film.
Trees may begin fruiting anywhere from 4 to 14 years old and can stay productive for more than a century. Fruits ripen three to eight months after flowering; harvesters listen for a hollow sound when tapping. The sticky latex is so persistent that hands and knives are oiled before cutting. Cut fruit deteriorates within days, though cool storage stretches that to several weeks. In 2024 India led production with about 1.4 million tonnes, ahead of Bangladesh.
Ripe bulbs taste faintly of pineapple or banana and go into jams, sweets, chips and even distilled liquor. Unripe fruit is cooked into curries with coconut milk, and canned jackfruit is sold as a meat substitute. Roasted seeds serve as a commercial stand-in for cocoa. Outside Asia the tree has spread to Africa and the Americas, and in Brazil's Tijuca Forest it has become invasive.
Source: Jackfruit
