Borojoa, Anyone growing it?

[davidgarcia899]

Does anyone have this in their collection? I was wondering about cold tolerance, ph tolerance, and sun tolerance.

[luc]

David , I am down to one plant , male and female are needed so I may as well forget about fruit , I had about 10 in the ground ......not the easiest to keep alive , They were all planted in a shaded area , I replicating how I saw them growing and fruiting in Panama and Honduras , these plants were all grafted and produced full size fruit on a 70 cm tree , the fruits were supported in order not to bend / break the tree .

Kleaning the fruit is also a pain , has probably 300 to 400 seeds , very sticky and sweetish paste . I liked the milkshakes they make with it and YES it does give you an energy boost .

I don't think I will try to grow more specially with my 8 month dry season ....

[murraystevena2]

I had 5 seedlings or so of this species too, only mine didn't make it. This was one of the first species I tried to grow from seeds in 2003, 4 or 5 not entirely sure but I got them from tradewinds. Back then didn't know what I was doing. Im sure that 5 of my seedlings germinated but back then I didn't label them right (the plastic bags they came with the original paper stickers on it was my label, later on I realized i could buy tags)  I then was away for 6 months in Mexico and then lived in Melbourne Florida for a year. when I came back I wasnt sure what was what on most of my early seedlings. Greenhouse was not heated back then and I think they all died during the winter or during the summer because the there wasnt a heating wall that worked. It went from really wet in there to really dry to really hot. I also had a bunch of passionvines and they covered about 80% of the underside of the greenhouse, until I got rid of them. So I'm not sure what happened to them. Until 3 years ago I thought I still had them, but when plants put out guava like flowers I realized it was something different(turned out that they were cas guavas). Pretty plant though, looks kind of like Noni. I would like to try growing them again, but my personal opinion is that they are more tropical than suptropical and I don't think they can take a frost. They do prefer partial shape to shape, and as Luc stated need both a male and female plant to fruit so you would need a couple of plants in the beginning... I would like to hear more about flavor luc, the descriptions I heard made it sounded like a cross of a pomegranate and marmalade (marmalade box is if I am not mistaken either a closely related species or another common name).

[fruitlovers]

Borojo is growing and fruiting fine at the Hilo experimental station. Those trees are in full sun. I tried growing it from seeds several times and failed. They would get up to about 4 inches tall and then mysteriously stop growing and eventually die. I heard from another nurseryman the same exact thing happened with his plants. Still don't know what the problem is?
The taste is quite good. It is a pasty sweet fruit, kind of like eating a processed jam. It does have a lot of seeds embedded inside that jam, but not a problem unless you are trying to extract the seeds for growing. Jim West brought me once some dried borojo that is sold in Ecuador and also was quite nice.
Here is a photo of a borojo fruit:

[HIfarm]

I probably should double check this before posting (I haven't looked at them in about a month) but I have a couple dozen or so seedlings, maybe 8" or so high.  I have them growing under shadecloth (60%, I think) in 1/2 gallon nursery bags.  I am planning on planting them out later this year (however, in light of Oscar's posting, I'd best keep my fingers crossed).

I am guessing that the fruit is eaten seeds & all from your posting, Oscar?  Any fruit you would compare it to, flavorwise?

John

Borojo is growing and fruiting fine at the Hilo experimental station. Those trees are in full sun. I tried growing it from seeds several times and failed. They would get up to about 4 inches tall and then mysteriously stop growing and eventually die. I heard from another nurseryman the same exact thing happened with his plants. Still don't know what the problem is?
The taste is quite good. It is a pasty sweet fruit, kind of like eating a processed jam. It does have a lot of seeds embedded inside that jam, but not a problem unless you are trying to extract the seeds for growing. Jim West brought me once some dried borojo that is sold in Ecuador and also was quite nice.

[fruitlovers]

I probably should double check this before posting (I haven't looked at them in about a month) but I have a couple dozen or so seedlings, maybe 8" or so high.  I have them growing under shadecloth (60%, I think) in 1/2 gallon nursery bags.  I am planning on planting them out later this year (however, in light of Oscar's posting, I'd best keep my fingers crossed).

I am guessing that the fruit is eaten seeds & all from your posting, Oscar?  Any fruit you would compare it to, flavorwise?

John

As i recall i ate it seeds and all. Fruit is very similar tasting to Alibertia edulis, to which it is closely related. That may not help you, but that's the only one i can think of that is similar.

[Finca La Isla]

To me, the taste is kind of like the British mincemeat pie, kind of an herby raisin flavor. 
It grows alright from seed here although slow.  We have made air layers from production trees and also found small branches with roots that were removed and successfully established.  Colombians are the main market for this fruit.
Peter

[luc]

To me, the taste is kind of like the British mincemeat pie, kind of an herby raisin flavor. 
It grows alright from seed here although slow.  We have made air layers from production trees and also found small branches with roots that were removed and successfully established.  Colombians are the main market for this fruit.
Peter

You have the ideal climate and humidity Peter , I bought some fruits from a street vender in Bogota , 5 dollars a piece ....if I remember correctly...

[Coconut]

I have failed several time, seem to do well until cold hit it than it can not make it mind whether its on death row.  Like to be under my 8 feet kepel tree for some strange reason, move else where & full sun and it suffer.  Probably need greenhouse even here in Boca Raton zone 10b. I thought Kepel was a test in patient until this suppose to be aphrodisiac fruit tree defeated me.

[davidgarcia899]

Thanks for the info guys. I think I am not gonna try this one unless someone gives me one

[luc]

Thanks for the info guys. I think I am not gonna try this one unless someone gives me one

Don't you like a good challenge David ....hahaha...

[muttley]

Apologies for reviving a somewhat old topic here, but I had to make mention of my ongoing experiment with Borojo cultivation, here in tropical Africa just 6 degrees north of the Equator.

Having read up quite a bit on the amazing nutritional properties of this fruit, I now regard Borojoa as having the potential to alleviate hunger in much of the Third World.  With that thought in mind I started a nursery with ten thousand Borojo seeds that I acquired from South America.  By the time the seedlings were strong enough for transplant out into the 30 hectares of riverside land that I am leasing from the government here, I was down to about 5,000 seedlings, all of which are now planted out, with most in the shade of other trees.

So far I have disovered that the information found in many internet websites, advising that Borojoa patinoi grows best in partial shade, is simply wrong.   My tallest Borojoa trees all happen to have been planted in direct sunlight.  The rest, planted in the shade of other trees, simply do not compare to the ones planted out in the open.  With the next batch of Borojoa seeds I hope to start off this year in my nursery, there will be no further planting in the shade, and the whole lot will be right out in the open, where they will be fed with fermented chicken manure.

If anyone is interested, I will write back here, and post a few pictures of the flourishing young Borojoa trees around my home.  Already, the leaves on these trees are massive, reaching up to a couple of feet long.     

Closing off this first post of mine in this forum,  I would like to shout an Aloha to Oscar from Fruit Lovers in Hawaii.  I bought a few varieties of seeds from you a while back, including some lychee which have taken off quite well, though it remains to be seen whether they actually fruit here, so close to the Equator.  Your comment about Borojo doing well in direct sunlight at that Hilo facility tallies with my experience here for sure.

 I can't wait to see Borojoa patinoi trees bear fruit here on the African continent, possibly for the first time ever.   The market potential of this ultra-nutritious fruit is absolutely enormous in this part of the world, and I am really excited to be farming in a climate zone where cultivation of this unsung botanical treasure is actually possible.

[fruitlovers]

Good luck with all your borojo plants! Where in Africa are you located?
Most lychees don't fruit well in tropical zones as they need some cool weather in winter to initiate flowering. There are some cultivars of lychee that fruit better than others in tropical zones. But for most it would be best to try to grow them in the highlands.

[muttley]

Hello Oscar, and thanks for the reply.  My farm is located in Ghana, hence my certainty that Borojoa will thrive in this tropical climate, whose seasons, mean temperatures and humidity are identical to those of Borojoa's native Amazon jungles.

 Check out these shots of trees just a little over one year after transplant.  Notice that the trees in open sunlight are growing much faster than those in partial shade.  That disparity in growth rates is completely at odds with the conventional practice of planting Borojo in shade or diffuse sunlight, as published in numerous websites devoted to the subject.

[fruitlovers]

Muttley, thanks for the photos. Your borojo plants look very healthy. I had a hard time growing them myself. They would get to about 10 cm and then stop growing. I've heard this from other growers also. Don't know what causes that? Now i notice all plants in rubiacea (coffee family) like the borojo are starting to get some kind of leaf disease here. Might be spread from the coffee growers.

[muttley]

Hello Oscar,  you are right that these trees are being chewed on by some sort of insect or parasite that I so far haven't caught in the act.  Some plants get attacked worse than others, and on some plants, the damage suddenly stops without apparent reason.  I am very reluctant to use insecticides and all agro-chemicals in general, but I did wind up spraying one area in the farm where the leaves were being nibbled out of existence.

Photobucket has been acting up today, so I could only post this one picture for now.  I had been trying to upload pictures of the nursery that produced these trees.  Oh well, I'll try again later.

[muttley]

Since this is a very old thread, I will try and justify resurrecting it by quickly mentioning that I have made a couple of unexpected discoveries about the Borojoa patinoi tree, whose fruit are the only ones in existence to pack thrice the protein content derivable from beef, in addition to a slew of essential vitamins.

The number of years between when a Borojoa patinoi seed is sown, and when the resultant tree is mature enough to produce flowers and fruit, is specified as 6 years on average, in every single fact sheet I found online regarding this plant, YET, a few days ago I was pleasantly surprised to see a male flower about to bloom on a Borojoa sapling that started its life under 2 years ago as a seed planted in a shaded nursery.   

While this one solitary flower is by no means conclusive evidence that the female Borojo trees will also flower early enough to be pollinated from the male flower or flowers that form, there is indeed now a very strong indication that the Borojo patinoi matures THREE times faster in tropical Africa than it does several time zones away in its native Amazon Jungle habitat of origin.  I will write back to this forum in the coming months, to report on whether my optimistic speculation actually bears fruit, if you will pardon the pun.

The second major discovery I stumbled on concerns the widely stated caution that Borojoa patinoi is an under-story plant which requires shade to grow properly.  I found this fact to be true, given that most of the Borojoa seedlings that I planted in the open wound up drying out in the relentless tropical sun, HOWEVER, I also found that the other extreme of too much shade results in stunted growth of Borojoa seedlings.

By visually comparing the rate of growth of the Borojoa seedlings planted out in the thousands under a tree canopy down by the riverside, it became evident that about 50 meters apart is the optimum spacing of old-growth shade trees selectively left standing to shelter a plantation of Borojoa.   If the old-growth shade trees stand any closer together than 50 meters (50 yards), the growth of all Borojoa seedlings planted in that shade slows down drastically.  If the shade trees are much further than 50 yards apart, excessive sunlight reaches the Borojo seedlings for too many hours a day, causing the Borojo leaves to brown and the seedlings to dry out.

So there you have it, Borojo patinoi thrives in shade, as the world knows already, but it took yours truly to quantify just how much shade is required for optimal development and maturity of this magical tree, Borojoa patinoi, whose fruit have the unique distinction of being a direct dietary substitute for any variety of animal protein currently consumed by humans.   

Thank you for taking the time to read through my humble dissertation, and that'll be ten bucks for the free information provided here, payable in free beer whenever my ramblings take me to your neck of the woods

[Soren]

Muttley - here in tropical Eastafrica (Uganda) they too grow extremely fast and I have seen no stunned growth or likewise.! Yours have bigger leafs than mine, likely because yours are growing in more shade than mine.

[muttley]

Wait a minute Soren, before I read your post here, I had assumed that I was the very first person on the planet to cultivate a plantation of Amazonian Borojo in Africa, only to find out that you are way ahead of me.  I need a moment to absorb this news from Uganda.

I suppose this means I will now have to look elsewhere for that 15 minutes of fleeting fame promised me by Andy Warhol.   On a serious note it is great news to see that this botanical treasure has started to gain the recognition it deserves in tropical Africa, where animal and fish protein are comparatively expensive.

A few minutes before I sat down to write this response, a group of local hunters spent the afternoon chasing down rodents and small antelope with dogs, harvesting those meager sources of protein with very loud muzzle-loaders.  Meat is a highly prized commodity in this part of the African continent, as evidenced by the vast amount of energy devoted to acquiring small game animals to eat, and Borojo has the potential to make a MASSIVE difference in this regard, by making a vegetarian diet both feasible and healthy for rich and poor alike.

A tree like Borojo, if cultivated on a large scale in tropical Africa and Asia, would gain recognition as a long-overdue alternate source for all the protein that meat or poultry contain, along with a myriad of other nutritional benefits not found in beef, fish or chicken.  The fact that Borojo grows best under a shady canopy means that existing tree plantations can serve double utility with Borojo planted as an under-story to the older plantation tree canopy.

It is great to hear from you Soren, and please do post some pictures of the Borojo trees you are cultivating in Uganda, particularly if any of them happen to be in flower, or bearing fruit.  I am also curious to know whether or not the Borojo fruit finds a ready market in Uganda, if per chance you sell the harvest locally.   

Warmest regards from muttley

[fruitlovers]

Durian also has a lot of protein, for a fruit. I thought main virtue of borojo was high concentration of phosphorous or potassium, not protein? I tried growing them here, but failed. I think i was giving them too much shade from what you say. They would get to about 4 inches tall and then stop growing completely. I'll have to try it again. There are producing trees here at experimental station so i know it's possible.

[Finca La Isla]

Borojo grows pretty easily for us here.  I think that if you have full sun, then you better have a soil that is rich in nutrients and that doesn't really dry out.
We make a milkshake with it occasionally.  In Panama they make a "batido" with milk and kola syrup.  In Colombia they also dry it and make it into preserves.
I've been able to establish niche markets for lots of fruits that were unknown by my customers until I introduced them to these fruits.  Not all fruits end up being accepted and borojo would be in this category except for its reputation as an aphrodisiac.  None of us are very interested in eating it out of hand and when it comes to juice drinks there is a lot of competition.  I would encourage a diversified farm, there are hundreds of kinds of fruit that can be grown in that area.
Unless I am mistaken, borojo is not native to the Amazon but to the Pacific side of colombia, perhaps into Ecuador.
Peter

[buddyguygreen]

Just curious, how long do they take on average to germinate, Ive had seeds for 2 months now still no germ.

[muttley]

Hello BuddyGuyGreen most of the Borojo seeds I planted in the nursery germinated at between 6 weeks and 2 months from the time they were sown, so your 2 month wait is not unusual.  Once they germinate those huge leaves start to grow and that is a rewarding sight for sure.

Boenos dias Finca La Isla.   Mixing Borojoa with milk or honey is evidently the way to go since as you mentioned the taste of pure Borojoa fruit has been widely described as anything from "interesting" to "unpalatable".   Despite that fabled strong taste though, the extremely high protein content of this species makes it such an important crop, particularly in the tropical Third World where the plant grows the best and is needed for basic nutrition the most. .

Regarding the native habitat where Borojo originated, I have in my haphazard online research seen frequent reference to the forested floodplains of the Amazon River, as it flows through several south American countries, to be the approximate geographical zone in which naturally occurring Borojoa patinoi thrive.

Aloha Oscar.  Good to hear from you again.  The stoppage of growth that you have observed with the Borojo seedlings you planted sounds identical to the poor growth rate I have seen in most of the seedlings that were planted under too thick of an overhead tree canopy.  In areas where the old-growth trees were further thinned out till the standing shade trees were on average 50 meters apart, the Borojoa seedlings grew much faster than those under the more dense canopy.

The per weight concentration of essential human-digestible proteins in Borojoa patinoi fruit is indeed three times greater than that of beef, and I will try and dig up and post here a few internet links on the subject.  I stand to be corrected, but to the best of my layman's  knowledge, there is NO other plant in existence besides Borojoa,  whose protein content matches that of beef, talk less of exceeding it by a multiple of three, as does Borojoa.

With all the lessons I have learned about the very particular shade requirements of this amazing plant, I expect my next batch of seedlings to fare much better than the first experimental grow. 

[buddyguygreen]

Thanks for that info, Its definitely a fruit I cant wait to try. Hopefully they sprout soon and I''ll be sure to try a couple different shade/light variables because Im sure its based on the environment. Ill keep you all posted in the turnout.

[Coconut]

Hello BuddyGuyGreen most of the Borojo seeds I planted in the nursery germinated at between 6 weeks and 2 months from the time they were sown, so your 2 month wait is not unusual.  Once they germinate those huge leaves start to grow and that is a rewarding sight for sure.

Boenos dias Finca La Isla.   Mixing Borojoa with milk or honey is evidently the way to go since as you mentioned the taste of pure Borojoa fruit has been widely described as anything from "interesting" to "unpalatable".   Despite that fabled strong taste though, the extremely high protein content of this species makes it such an important crop, particularly in the tropical Third World where the plant grows the best and is needed for basic nutrition the most. .

Regarding the native habitat where Borojo originated, I have in my haphazard online research seen frequent reference to the forested floodplains of the Amazon River, as it flows through several south American countries, to be the approximate geographical zone in which naturally occurring Borojoa patinoi thrive.

Aloha Oscar.  Good to hear from you again.  The stoppage of growth that you have observed with the Borojo seedlings you planted sounds identical to the poor growth rate I have seen in most of the seedlings that were planted under too thick of an overhead tree canopy.  In areas where the old-growth trees were further thinned out till the standing shade trees were on average 50 meters apart, the Borojoa seedlings grew much faster than those under the more dense canopy.

The per weight concentration of essential human-digestible proteins in Borojoa patinoi fruit is indeed three times greater than that of beef, and I will try and dig up and post here a few internet links on the subject.  I stand to be corrected, but to the best of my layman's  knowledge, there is NO other plant in existence besides Borojoa,  whose protein content matches that of beef, talk less of exceeding it by a multiple of three, as does Borojoa.

With all the lessons I have learned about the very particular shade requirements of this amazing plant, I expect my next batch of seedlings to fare much better than the first experimental grow.

I too failed miserably like Oscar...& other.  Yes I have them thriving to a foot high in rich three gallon pots, then they slowly die.  This happen to me four years in a row.  Maybe my seed strain came from amazon flood plain zone so I might need to stick my potted plant into the pond once a year??  I have them under  various tree like coconut tree, sugar apple...etc to full sun, did not matter than one by one pickup by mysterious health degradation & death.  I would love to master this plant for the fact I am getting tire of getting protein from my guava!