On this Mango turkey the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. This article is about the fruit. A mango is an edible stone fruit produced by the tropical tree Mangifera indica.
It is believed to have originated between northwestern Myanmar, Bangladesh, and northeastern India. Worldwide, there are several hundred cultivars of mango. Depending on the cultivar, mango fruit varies in size, shape, sweetness, skin color, and flesh color, which may be pale yellow, gold, green, or orange. The trees are long-lived, as some specimens still fruit after 300 years.
Over 500 varieties of mangoes are known, many of which ripen in summer, while some give a double crop. The ripe fruit varies according to cultivar in size, shape, color, sweetness, and eating quality. Depending on the cultivar, fruits are variously yellow, orange, red, or green. Ripe intact mangoes give off a distinctive resinous, sweet smell. Mangoes have recalcitrant seeds which do not survive freezing and drying. Mangoes originated from the region between northwestern Myanmar, Bangladesh, and northeastern India.
From their center of origin, mangoes diverged into two genetically distinct populations: the subtropical Indian group and the tropical Southeast Asian group. The Indian group is characterized by having monoembryonic fruits, while polyembryonic fruits characterize the Southeast Asian group. It was previously believed that mangoes originated from a single domestication event in South Asia before being spread to Southeast Asia, but a 2019 study found no evidence of a center of diversity in India. There are many hundreds of named mango cultivars.
In mango orchards, several cultivars are often grown to improve pollination. Many desired cultivars are monoembryonic and must be propagated by grafting, or they do not breed true. Cultivars that excel in one climate may fail elsewhere. For example, Indian cultivars such as ‘Julie,’ a prolific cultivar in Jamaica, require annual fungicide treatments to escape the lethal fungal disease anthracnose in Florida. Asian mangoes are resistant to anthracnose. The current world market is dominated by the cultivar ‘Tommy Atkins’, a seedling of ‘Haden’ that first fruited in 1940 in southern Florida and was initially rejected commercially by Florida researchers.
Generally, ripe mangoes have an orange-yellow or reddish peel and are juicy for eating, while exported fruit are often picked while underripe with green peels. Although producing ethylene while ripening, unripened exported mangoes do not have the same juiciness or flavor as fresh fruit. From tropical Asia, mangoes were introduced to East Africa by Arab and Persian traders in the ninth to tenth centuries. The mango is now cultivated in most frost-free tropical and warmer subtropical climates.
It is cultivated extensively in South Asia, Southeast Asia, East and West Africa, the tropical and subtropical Americas, and the Caribbean. Many commercial cultivars are grafted onto the cold-hardy rootstock of the Gomera-1 mango cultivar, originally from Cuba. Its root system is well adapted to a coastal Mediterranean climate. An important breakthrough in mango cultivation is the use of potassium nitrate and ethrel to induce flowering in mangoes.