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| Açai Tree |
Açai is the world’s latest Superfruit, one of those high protein fruits whose nutrient-rich content leaves it open to the application of modern marketing terms. The fruit is popular all over Brazil, although it is mostly eaten as the frozen pulp in a type of sorbet around the coastal areas, usually with extras such as bananas, strawberries, granola and honey. The açai fruit itself comes from the thin açai palm tree which grows up to 30m high in the floodplains of the Amazon region. The palm also grows in other countries in the Amazon basin such as Peru, and even up through the jungles of Central America to Honduras and Belize. At the moment though, as far as the rest of the world is concerned, açai comes from Brazil.
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| Açai fruit attached to thin branches |
This may be because cultivation of the açai fruit has been easier in Brazil, with larger tracts of flat lands around the state of Para in particular which also have access to the larger Amazon tributaries for transporting away from the area, unlike those countries further up the river system. The palm may be thin but it is also sturdy, allowing Amazon natives to scale the trunk to harvest the fruit. The palm fruits hang down from the top of the trunk in panicles attached to thin branches. Each panicle contains perhaps 20-50 of the small grape-sized fruits, and there may be up to 1,000 of the fruits growing on each tree in their biannual crop. The fruits begin life green but gain their dark purple colour under the equatorial sun, which is when they are harvested, pulped and transported.
