Year-round mangoes owe everything to a Filipino farming trick involving smoke
Mango trees used to flower only every 16 to 18 months. In 1974 the Filipino horticulturist Ramon Barba turned a traditional smoke technique into a chemical spray that makes them bloom on demand, and orchards worldwide adopted it. The fruit itself may be an evolutionary leftover, built for animals that no longer exist.
Mangifera indica arose in the region where north-eastern India, Bangladesh and north-western Myanmar meet. Botanists call the fruit an evolutionary anachronism: its big stone was probably once spread by a now-extinct large forager. The trees are giants, growing 30 to 40 metres tall with taproots reaching 6 metres into deep soil, and some still fruit after 300 years. New leaves emerge orange-pink, turn glossy red and only then go dark green.
Two genetic lineages emerged, a subtropical Indian group whose seeds carry one embryo and a tropical Southeast Asian group whose seeds carry several. Scientists long assumed a single domestication in South Asia, but a 2019 study found more unique diversity in Southeast Asian cultivars, hinting at an earlier start there, though its authors warned that crossing with wild relatives could explain the pattern. Either way, domestication was more complicated than once thought. Prized single-embryo varieties such as Alphonso, the so-called king of mangoes, must be grafted to breed true.
Arab and Persian traders carried mangoes to East Africa in the ninth and tenth centuries, and Ibn Battuta found them at Mogadishu. The Portuguese moved them from Goa to Africa and then Brazil, while Spanish galleons brought them from Manila to western Mexico. Florida got its first trees only by 1833, and a Florida seedling, Tommy Atkins, now dominates Western supermarkets for its shelf life and colour, even though local researchers first dismissed it. Mangoes also grow around Málaga, one of the few spots in mainland Europe warm enough.
The English word came in the sixteenth century from Portuguese manga, via Malayalam, from Tamil roots meaning mango tree and unripe fruit. Over 500 cultivars are known. In 2023 the world grew 61 million tonnes of mangoes, mangosteens and guavas combined, with India producing 43 percent. India, Pakistan and the Philippines all claim the mango as their national fruit, while Bangladesh chose the tree as its national tree.
Source: Mango
