I've had a decent fruiting Alphonso mango tree for 4 years now. in zone 10a Florida. Very tasty and no issues with it to date.
Hi Raul,
Nice to know that you liked the taste of Alphanso. I am not sure which poart of India they were exported from, but the best tasting Alphanso are grown in Devgad and Ratnagiri coastal belt. They even have GI registered, so that nobody else can sell Alphanso grown in different parts of India as Devgad Alphanso or Ratnagiri Alphanso. They get a special taste due to the red laterite soil and coastal climate in that region, and as a result most of their A and B grade Alphanso are exported, local market receives only C grade and below - still they fetch the highest price among all other varieties. That is the reason, Alphanso grown in some other areas / states label their boxes as Devgad Alphanso in order to get high price - but the professional mango eaters can easily differentiate the taste.
Banganpalli is not a very good tasting mango, however it is popular because it is one of the first variety to hit the Indian market - mostly picked before maturity in order to fetch higher price. Once Alphanso and Kesar hit the market then nobody buys Banganpalli. But the taste of Bangapalli grown at home and harvested at proper maturity is not bad tasting. If you have possibility then give a try to Kesar, Dasheri and Chaunsa mango as well, those are worth having varieties in your garden. None of them will have attractive color, but definitely very good taste.
If you have enough farm land then you could possibly plant Alphanso seeds, you might get lucky and get a good size/quality fruit - like my In-laws got. Many people in India do that and as a result they get really good tasting varieties of their own - we have at least 9 big fruiting seedlings out of which 7 are excellent tasting - out of them 2 have the potential to be commercial variety. See one tree that started fruiting 4 years ago, first fruiting was around 3-4 fruits, then next year 13-15 fruits, then 1 year gap and see the fruits this year, this is only what is visible from one side, there are many more inside the canopy and other side. In our village measuring from 500 x 500 meters approximately, i could find at least 500 seedling fruiting trees and if i search in our town then the number will easily go above 50000 and some of them are really excellent tasting.
This is our newly started fruiting seedling - excellent tasting fruit and very good size.
This is fruit from my cousin's seedling tree - excellent tasting fruit with very thin seed and attractive yellow color (with red/pink blush on sun exposed fruits). I have given it his name "Lester". I have grafted the scions of that variety to my multi grafted seedling and it started fruiting the next year (last year) and also got fruits this year. These photos are from the fruit that we got on our grafted tree last year. Unfortunately the fruit fell down during some stormy wind we had last year, but even after that it got ripe and was of excellent taste. The small one in this photo is Lester - the big one is Golden Queen - not so good taste compared to Lester