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Food

We Should Be Growing More Dragon Fruit

Agriculture research organisations say that the pink, scaley fruit’s hardiness and ability to adapt to different environments makes it a valuable but “underutilised” crop. It can also turn your pee red.
Photo via Flickr user rocor

Looking like a neon pink artichoke, the dragon fruit wouldn't be out of place on the Jetsons' dining table.

"When it comes to growing, there aren't any crops similar to dragon fruit," says Jay Ruskey, owner of Good Land Organics, who grows them in his Californian orchard, which also boasts cherimoyas (also known as "custard apples") and finger limes. "It's a night-blooming cactus that likes to climb up the stalks of trees, then stick its branches out while being supported by its host. The emergence, from the bud to flower to fruit, is an extremely rapid process, about 40 days. It's quite an opportunist and certainly doesn't waste any time when procreating."

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Dragon fruit is native to the hot climates and deserts of Central America, where it's commonly known as pitaya. In the 1800s, some pesky French missionaries brought it to Southeast Asia where it adopted its current name, a nod to its resemblance to both a fireball and the scales of a dragon. According to researchers at the University of California's Cooperative Extension, the fruit's hardiness and ability to adapt to different environments means it's a suitable crop for American soil, and more farmers should be encouraged to grow them.

Ruskey says it's the flowering process that is the most dramatic part of the cultivation—there are "large white blossoms that encourage bats for pollination" and "long flower petals that look like cockatoo feathers and open right at sunset." The picture he paints of this mystical plant has me captivated. And it seems I'm not the only one.

Dragon fruit is hot property. Experimental bakers are using it in muffins and tarts; juice bars are toting its antioxidant count in their smoothies, and earlier this year, Mike's Hard Lemonade released a fittingly lurid dragon fruit range of drinks.

For all that fuss you'd hope for an explosion of natural sugary goodness in the mouth, but the dragon fruit's interior is rather bland.

"I found it to have a watery texture. I first tried it in the Philippines where I had it with shrimp. It does pair well with some lightly-grilled kebab meat though," my friend Jess tells me.

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David is slightly more blunt. "It's like a cross between a grapefruit and a kiwi, it tastes like regret," he says. "I can see it going with something, but on its own was just a bit odd."

It's the flowering process that is the most dramatic part of dragon fruit cultivation—there are "large white blossoms that encourage bats for pollination" and "long flower petals that look like cockatoo feathers and open right at sunset."

Yup, this so-called superfruit appears to be a bit of a wolf in sheep's clothing. But Chuck Casano—founder of Pitaya Plus, a company that has been selling frozen Nicaraguan dragon fruit for the last six years—puts me straight. See, cutting open the fruit can reveal either white or red flesh with black specks. The redder the flesh, the sweeter the taste (and the increased likelihood of it turning your piss a different colour).

"To me it's like a strawberry, beet, and watermelon blended together. It's sweet, earthy and refreshing," says Casano, who calls the fruit pitaya as a reminder that he's talking about the red-fleshed variety that comes from Central America, and not its insipid, inferior brother usually grown in Southeast Asia.

Taste aside, Casano explains that, more importantly, pitaya also has a social benefit. His company has created plenty of jobs—over 150 in the last year alone, with about half of these going to single mothers.

"We opened up a whole new job market for Nicaraguans," he explains. "Before we started working with them, their sales were limited to the local market. Now they have a valuable crop that can help provide more income and better lives for their families."

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When Casano set up operations in the country, local farmers were being restricted by a lack of access to skills and tools and USDA regulations which prevented the fruit from being exported whole (there was a concern about fruit flies spreading disease) and it meant that the fruit had to be pulped, processed, and frozen before being shipped out. By the time the regulations were changed in 2012 to allow imports of the fresh fruit from Central America into the US, Piyata Plus had established itself in the market, selling packs of frozen fruit purée to juice and smoothie bars across California.

"In theory, prior to us, frozen pitaya was only accessible to 6 million Nicaraguans and now it's available to 300 million Americans," Casano adds.

READ MORE: You Could Be Buying Fruit from a Mexican Cartel

Agriculture research organisations like Crops for the Future regard dragon fruit as an "underutilised crop." Satisfying Western palates and appearing in sun-kissed Instagram posts may not be what they have in mind when it comes to promoting its cultivation, but if companies like Pitaya Plus are creating employment opportunities and helping single mothers support their children, surely dragon fruit cultivation can do no wrong?

Unfortunately, no level of saccharine social goodness can take away from the fact that smallholder communities will only benefit from such initiatives as long as there is a demand for a product. Right now, dragon fruit is the food of the moment. That could easily change though, warns Ruskey.

"There isn't a single thing I grow that isn't a gamble," he says. "Farming is dynamic at both [producer and consumer] ends, market [prices and demands] change all the time. Dragon fruit is no exception."

It seems dragon fruit is a "miracle" crop for as long as we have a taste for its mystical properties.