Author Topic: Excellence in mango fruit taste?  (Read 9999 times)

Mike T

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Excellence in mango fruit taste?
« on: June 29, 2012, 04:42:57 AM »
Over many decades various government agricultural facilities in Queensland have grown, assessed and distributed mango varieties for horticulture and commercial farms.Many hundreds of varieties of mangoes have been appraised and below is a list of such types at just one facility over a 17 year period:

Mango varieties: Akbar, Apple, Banana I, Batawi, Betti Amba, Beverly, Blue, Boribo, Brooks Late, Bullocks Heart, Carabao Harbon, Carabao Lamao, Carabao Los Banos, Carabao Mindanao, Carabao Super Manila, Coconut, Crimson Blush, Davis-Haden, Dot, Early Gold, Edward, Elephant Tusk, Fairchild, Fajri, Fascell, Florigon, Gail, Gary, Gedong, Golden Delight, Goldsworthy, Golek, Graham, Harumanis, Hatcher, Hingurakoka-Willard, Hong Sa, Hood, Indo-Chinese, Isis, Jacquelin, Jakarta, Jewel, Joe Welch, Julie, Kalapady, Keitt, Kent, Keow Savoey, Kopu Reva, Kuru, Laskarshikhan, Lippens, Maha 65, Malgoa Ramasamy, Manalagi, Mapulehu, Momi K, Nam Dok Mai, Nimrod, Ok Rong, Olour, Ono, Pairee, Pairi, Palmer, Parri, Pico, Pirie, Pope, Rapa, Rosa, Ruby, Rupee, Sabre, Santa Alexandrina, Sensation, Southern Blush, Spirit of '76, Springfels, Sufaida, Tommy Atkins, Tong Dum, Van Dyke, Vellai Colomban, Wally, Zardalu, Zillate.

Of all these mangoes and hundreds of others only 5 achieved a fruit flavor rating of excellent.These are,

valencia pride
florigon
kensington pride
kwan
nam dok mai
Admittedly a few of the best asian types like maha may have not been included in  appraisals and the methodology of flavor assessment by the government is not given so there are room for questions.Do people agree that these are some of the worlds best tasting mangoes? 

fruitlovers

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Re: Excellence in mango fruit taste?
« Reply #1 on: June 29, 2012, 05:53:59 AM »
Valencia pride was one of my favorites of the ones i tasted on a trip to Florida.
Florigon i would say is good, but wouldn't call it excellent. Ok it was excellent in that it was one of the best fruiters here this year.
Kensington pride tree is huge but so far only invisible fruits.  :( I get the feeling Aussies are hugely prejudiced about this one. I really doubt it's a top notch mango, but maybe on Australian soils it is?
Kwan never heard of it.
Nam dok mai tasted them in Thailand and were very nice. Have a tree here but still too small to fruit.
Oscar

BMc

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Re: Excellence in mango fruit taste?
« Reply #2 on: June 29, 2012, 05:56:11 AM »
I picked up a Kwan last year. My little tree now has so many flowers it is finding it hard to stand up straight! Cant wait for it to be big enough to hold 1kg plus mangoes!
Taste is cultural/personal. VP, KP and florigon will mostly appeal to one taster, while NDM and Kwan will mostly appeal to another taster.
Are these the best? Probably not, but I wouldnt turn down any of them.

Mike T

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Re: Excellence in mango fruit taste?
« Reply #3 on: June 29, 2012, 06:41:50 AM »
With so much effort in assessments I doubt if flavor appraisals came to just a couple of opinions or were influenced by bias.Kwan is really just a huge nam dok mai and there is something stange going on with KP if it taste no good in the 'new world'.I have tried VP and thought it was pretty good but not exceptional.I just wonder how come Ok rong was left off the excellent list?

bsbullie

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Re: Excellence in mango fruit taste?
« Reply #4 on: June 29, 2012, 06:46:55 AM »
Were any of the Indian mangoes tasted ?  They seem to be certain names missing from the list...

A rating like this can not only be climate/locale affected but completely subjective.  While Florigon can be very good, I would not put it in a top five nor would I ever rank VP anywhere near the top five....but this is my opinion based on my likes...hence the subjectivity.
- Rob

Mike T

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Re: Excellence in mango fruit taste?
« Reply #5 on: June 29, 2012, 07:11:29 AM »
What I left out was that I inspected this particular orchard in 1994/5 and there was another maybe 20 indian popular cultivars fruiting and several other asians but it appears none of these got an excellent rating.Many varieties were tried at other locations including higher altitude and across a wide latitudinal spread.Mangoes trialled prior to 1970 were chopped down to make way for the next lot.

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Re: Excellence in mango fruit taste?
« Reply #6 on: June 29, 2012, 07:55:12 AM »
Over many decades various government agricultural facilities in Queensland have grown, assessed and distributed mango varieties for horticulture and commercial farms.Many hundreds of varieties of mangoes have been appraised and below is a list of such types at just one facility over a 17 year period:

Mango varieties: Akbar, Apple, Banana I, Batawi, Betti Amba, Beverly, Blue, Boribo, Brooks Late, Bullocks Heart, Carabao Harbon, Carabao Lamao, Carabao Los Banos, Carabao Mindanao, Carabao Super Manila, Coconut, Crimson Blush, Davis-Haden, Dot, Early Gold, Edward, Elephant Tusk, Fairchild, Fajri, Fascell, Florigon, Gail, Gary, Gedong, Golden Delight, Goldsworthy, Golek, Graham, Harumanis, Hatcher, Hingurakoka-Willard, Hong Sa, Hood, Indo-Chinese, Isis, Jacquelin, Jakarta, Jewel, Joe Welch, Julie, Kalapady, Keitt, Kent, Keow Savoey, Kopu Reva, Kuru, Laskarshikhan, Lippens, Maha 65, Malgoa Ramasamy, Manalagi, Mapulehu, Momi K, Nam Dok Mai, Nimrod, Ok Rong, Olour, Ono, Pairee, Pairi, Palmer, Parri, Pico, Pirie, Pope, Rapa, Rosa, Ruby, Rupee, Sabre, Santa Alexandrina, Sensation, Southern Blush, Spirit of '76, Springfels, Sufaida, Tommy Atkins, Tong Dum, Van Dyke, Vellai Colomban, Wally, Zardalu, Zillate.

Of all these mangoes and hundreds of others only 5 achieved a fruit flavor rating of excellent.These are,

valencia pride
florigon
kensington pride
kwan
nam dok mai
Admittedly a few of the best asian types like maha may have not been included in  appraisals and the methodology of flavor assessment by the government is not given so there are room for questions.Do people agree that these are some of the worlds best tasting mangoes?

I have had all but Kwan.  Of course all are grown at my house....although I have tasted them all also grown from elsewhere here in South Florida (again excluding Kwan).  My tasting of Kensington Pride has been limited.  I planted out a tree a couple of years ago.  It produced about 4 fruits last year and didn't bloom this year at all. For fruits grown in my yard, at least flavorwise, these cultivars can reach excellence (on the Excellent, Good, Fair, Poor scale) but generally more in the Good range. Kensington Pride, the ones that I grew, were in the Fair to Good range. Nam Doc and Valencia Pride would have more top billing than would Florigon, in my opinion,  overall. I always like to refer back to the Fairchild Mango Book of the early 1990's.  It was my bible for deciding which mango cultivars that I wanted to seek out intially for addition to my collection. It ranks only Nam Doc as flat out excellent in flavor. It ranks Florigon as good to excellent and Valencia Pride as good.  It does not include Kwan nor Kensington Pride in their evaluation.  The fact that they are not included is a function of the fruit that was available to them at time of publishing and not a comment on the fruits themselves. Drawing from my experience here in South Florida, with countless tastings being observed, I would say that none of these fruits would take first prize on most tasting tables on any consistent basis. One of them might sneek away with the blue ribbon every now again, but generally they would be runner ups from somewhere in the middle of the pack (remembering that the pack is a whole heck of a lot of great mangoes I have selected over the years) ranging towards the top, but falling just short, in the taste order.

Harry
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Tropicdude

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Re: Excellence in mango fruit taste?
« Reply #7 on: June 29, 2012, 01:24:42 PM »
I do not understand how they do these tests, i mean that's a heck a lot of mangoes varieties, I do not believe they tested them all at the same time, because of their different ripening seasons, this means that they must have have been sample and voted upon at different times, and probably by different people.

Its one thing for me to sit down eat two mangoes and say, hmm i like this one over the other, its another to sit down eat 10, and compare them  with 10 I ate  2 months previous.
William
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HMHausman

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Re: Excellence in mango fruit taste?
« Reply #8 on: June 29, 2012, 02:08:23 PM »
I do not understand how they do these tests, i mean that's a heck a lot of mangoes varieties, I do not believe they tested them all at the same time, because of their different ripening seasons, this means that they must have have been sample and voted upon at different times, and probably by different people.

Its one thing for me to sit down eat two mangoes and say, hmm i like this one over the other, its another to sit down eat 10, and compare them  with 10 I ate  2 months previous.

Excellent point.  That's why the subjectivity is so....well, so subjective. Trying to rank these mangoes into loose categories of flavor is possible.  But, to make definitive evalauations and comparisons as we are want to do on this forum is considerably more difficult......but fun.....and makes for lots of dialogue where there was only mango juice slurping previously.

Harry
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nullzero

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Re: Excellence in mango fruit taste?
« Reply #9 on: June 29, 2012, 04:34:55 PM »
I wonder how some of these varieties differ from Palm Desert (CA arid/heat climate) to South FL (humid/heat). Would be very cool to do a blind taste testing between two mangoes of the same variety.
Grow mainly fruits, vegetables, and herbs.

Mike T

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Re: Excellence in mango fruit taste?
« Reply #10 on: June 29, 2012, 04:35:02 PM »
CM posted an evaluation of starfruit using a matrix with 5 scores for how people rated them for taste.I have seen these done for sapodilla and abius where the table gave a single score for appearance,flavor,productivity and other characters in a matrix.The end result is an overall score for a variety from one location.Z4 won the abiu face-off from memory.Tropicdude you are right that it would be difficult to do over extended periods but for a long time horticultural researchers were paid to do this and come up with recommendations and write descriptions of fruit characteristics.Unlike wine critics the fruit people could not hide behind a fog of silly adjectives.Imagine if a fruit description for flavour said it was 'round, crisp,provocative in personality while maintaining an edge and having a cheeky personality' or a fruits nose,aroma.fragrance and bouquet wre described as different qualities.They had to be clear and concise for fruit.

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Re: Excellence in mango fruit taste?
« Reply #11 on: June 30, 2012, 04:13:49 AM »
I do not understand how they do these tests, i mean that's a heck a lot of mangoes varieties, I do not believe they tested them all at the same time, because of their different ripening seasons, this means that they must have have been sample and voted upon at different times, and probably by different people.

Its one thing for me to sit down eat two mangoes and say, hmm i like this one over the other, its another to sit down eat 10, and compare them  with 10 I ate  2 months previous.

Excellent point.  That's why the subjectivity is so....well, so subjective. Trying to rank these mangoes into loose categories of flavor is possible.  But, to make definitive evalauations and comparisons as we are want to do on this forum is considerably more difficult......but fun.....and makes for lots of dialogue where there was only mango juice slurping previously.

Harry

You can look at the pomegranate tasting evaluations done in Davis, California and the avocado evaluations done here in Hawaii for some guidelines on how to score the fruits. While it's true that one person's evaluation is subjective as the pool of people rating a fruit becomes larger and larger it becomes less and less subjective. One thing learned in the Hawaii avocado taste evaluations is that score is going to depend on group of people sampled. For example, the gourmet chefs consistently rated Kahaluu avocado as tops, but in the general public taste test Yamagata got top score, and i think Kahaluu was third or fourth. I thing same would be true with mango taste tests. If you poll mango aficionados for what is the best the results are going to be vastly different than if you poll the general public. Another very important factor is how the trees were grown, how much care they were given. I notice for example with Kaimana lychees that from some farms they are excellent, others, just good, and others just mediocre. So where the samples are obtained is going to greatly influence the outcome.
Oscar

Mike T

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Re: Excellence in mango fruit taste?
« Reply #12 on: June 30, 2012, 04:58:13 AM »
Very good point Oscar the avocado industry did something similar in Queensland to review market acceptability with the general pubic.They repeated trials in several districts.Most acceptable flesh for the public varied between locations with shepard,sharwil and reed doing well all over but hass,shepard and sharwil has the most acceptable appearance in that order consistently.I planted reed and shephard because they are the most heat tolerant of the local good types.
With mangoes KP wins taste and appearance evaluation all the time with the public as they have been so imprinted I believe.This does not reflect the chef and mango expert perspective in evaluations. 

BMc

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Re: Excellence in mango fruit taste?
« Reply #13 on: July 01, 2012, 05:31:18 AM »
Kensington pride tree is huge but so far only invisible fruits.  :( I get the feeling Aussies are hugely prejudiced about this one. I really doubt it's a top notch mango, but maybe on Australian soils it is?

Oscar, its an amazing drought mango. They are at their best in the dry tropics. Here, we dont get to eat them unless we are in our 7-8 year drought cycle - but then we get truckloads. I'd imagine it would do well on the dry side of big island. Its originally an Indian mango and has lots of flavour and sugar.

ericalynne

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Re: Excellence in mango fruit taste?
« Reply #14 on: July 01, 2012, 08:25:52 PM »
Although I have had mango tastings at fruit clubs and the Mango festival, I didn't really feel that I got enough of the fruit to savor it. Luckily for me, a weekend ago or so Harry kindly gave me a tour of his orchard and I got to taste several varieties and then go back and compare. I don't remember them all, but I know that my favorites for that tasting were Glenn and Maha Chanok. Later that weekend, I tried a bunch more mangos and one was Florigon, and I agree that is a middling good but not superior mango flavor. Edward was just as good as I remember it. As was Carrie. Yesterday I bought some roadside mangos. Valencia Pride was quite decent flavor and Keitt was excellent. Thank you Harry and Rob for all the great mango tasting! Even though I have sworn off buying more mangoes for my zone 9 orchard, I did get a Maha Chanok.  :)
Erica