ABSTRACT
The jackfruit is an evergreen tree, 9 to 21 m (30-70 ft.) tall. It is thought to have originated in the rainforests of the Western Ghats (a mountain chain of southwestern India) and is adapted to grow only in humid tropical and near-tropical climates. The ancient Romans were aware of the jackfruit as a result of their expeditions. Jackfruit is an important food crop in the tropics and is cultivated in India, Burma, Sri Lanka (Ceylon), southern China, Malaya, East Indies, Philippines, central and eastern Africa, Surinam, and Australia. The fruit is most popular in India and Sri Lanka. A sticky, white latex is present in all parts of the plant. The fruit is the largest of all edible tree fruits: 20 to 90 cm (8-36 in.) long and 15 to 50 cm (6-20 in.) wide and weighing 4.5 to 20 kg (10-44 lb.) or sometimes as much as 50 kg (110 lb.). (Strictly speaking, the fruit is a “multiple fruit” or “aggregate fruit,” composed of many individual fruits.) The inedible rind of the fruit is green or yellowish-green, turning yellow when ripe, made up of numerous hard, cone-like, spiny points attached to a thick, rubbery, pale yellow or whitish wall. The interior of the fruit is made up of large bulbs of yellow, banana-§avored §esh, among narrow ribbons of thin, tough material and a central, pithy core. Each bulb encloses a white-membrane-covered, light-brown pit or seed, 2 to 4 cm (3/4-1½ in.) long. There may be 100 to 500 pits in a single fruit. In India, a good yield is 150 large fruits per tree annually, with large mature trees sometimes producing as many as 500 fruits.
