Fruit has been nourishing for the human body since the beginning of time. There have been many exotic fruits that have been put in our grocery stores but the fruit that intrigues me the most is mangos. The reason why the mango intrigues me so much is when I was little, my mom would come home with kiwis and all of these fun fruits that I had grown to love. But the one that I thought was extremely cool was the mango and I liked it because it had a huge hairy pit in the middle and I liked feeling it and looking at it.

According to a research journal called Pharmacognosy Reviews, “Mango is now cultivated throughout the tropical and subtropical world for commercial fruit production, as a garden tree, and as a shade tree for stock.” The commercial mango in the US is grown in Florida and according to an FDA presentation, “Commercial mangos are propagated vegetatively, meaning the trees are reproduced via asexual reproduction by grafting onto rootstock”. Once they are propagated and they start to grow, ideally they continue to grow from the winter months into the spring. It takes 100-150 days for the mango fruit to mature and be ready for harvesting according to the FDA. The mango fruit that is harvested will be green.

There was a time when my family wanted to plant a mango tree because at our old house before we moved we had a huge garden. But we quickly realized that we cannot do that because mango trees need to be grown in a “tropical” area and it cannot be too hot and in Texas, we all know that it gets way too hot for things to even grow. According to the FDA mango presentation “long picking pole which has a canvas or nylon bag attached near a cutting blade to catch the fruit. Ladders and hydraulic lifts are also used” Finally with packing and distribution, there is a use of water to keep the mangoes good while they travel and use the cooling room while they travel in the boxes. I believe that these methods are not sustainable. There is a lot of water used in the process of producing and growing mangos and that can pose an issue to the greater world because water is becoming more scarce and the overuse of water in agriculture has been a major issue for a long time. Looking into more sustainability areas, there is no push to limit the amount of water. I do think that it is not sustainable because of the amount of greenhouse gasses that are being put into the air because of transporting the mangoes to different places and also the equipment being used. Personally, I think it will be hard to pivot to a more sustainable way to produce mangoes so I don’t think there will be a switch to a more sustainable way anytime soon. I mentioned these ideas to my friend and he also mentioned an interesting thing about how mangoes are considered not sustainable and this is because of the use of irrigation in the months that are not producing enough water for the fruit to continue to survive. This poses another issue because this continues to use more water and not conserving which will let there be less water for the general population and could cause a crisis. His mention of this to me just solidified that the production of mangos cannot be sustainable because there is no conservation of energy or resources happening.

In terms of the history of mangos and where they are produced and have been consumed, according to the USDA, “​​Mangoes originated in India over 4,000 years ago” and continued to spread into Asia and be propagated and eaten in Asia. In the 1600s Portuguese explorers brought mangos over to the Americas, and mangos were not grown in the US until the 1800s. Nowadays in the US, mangos are mostly produced in Florida, but Asia still grows 75% of all mangos in the world. I was speaking with my friend about these facts and he was extremely interested because it’s fascinating that Asia grows 75% of all the mangos still because Asia does have that kind of environment where mangos can thrive in. It’s hard to grow exotic fruits like this in Texas, he mentioned, and I completely agree and it makes sense why everything would be grown in Florida and Asia.

Now for the fun recipe part of this blog post! The recipe that I chose that includes mangos is mango habanero salsa. You will need to finely chop up garlic, and add 1 ¼ teaspoon of salt and make it into a paste. You’ll mix the garlic paste with mangos, scallion, oil, lime juice, cilantro, and habaneros. That’s it! Pretty easy and fast. My dad makes this dip all the time whenever we have a night when we are eating chips and salsa!

Blog Post By Edward Loya

Bibliography:

FDA. (n.d.). Mangos – UC Davis Western Institute for Food Safety and Security. Mangos pdf. Retrieved October 11, 2022, from https://wifss.ucdavis.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Mangos_PDF.pdf

USDA. (n.d.). Mango – Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. Dpi. Retrieved October 11, 2022, from https://dpi.wi.gov/sites/default/files/imce/school-nutrition/pdf/fact-sheet-mango.pdf

Shah, K. A., Patel, M. B., Patel, R. J., & Parmar, P. K. (1970, January 1). Mangifera indica (mango). Pharmacognosy Review. Retrieved October 11, 2022, from https://doi.org/10.4103/0973-7847.65325