Babaco

Babaco is a tree-like perennial herbaceous plant of the genus Vasconcellea from the Caricaceae family. Notably, babako is considered a natural hybrid of mountain papaya. The plant itself is distinguished by the presence of an unbranched or weakly branched non-woody cylindrical trunk. In a natural environment, that is, wildlife, the height of the plant can reach five to eight, with cultivated species barely exceeding two to three meters.

At the top of the tree, leaves extending from the trunk, which have a palmate-lobed shape and a long petiole, form an umbrella. Continuously, single white flowers appear in the axils of the leaves, which the babako has only female, unlike papaya.

Shaped like an elongated pentahedron, babako fruits can be up to half a meter in length. They do not contain seeds - for their development they do not need pollination, since babako reproduces only in the vegetative way. Interestingly, the first bloom begins just weeks after planting.

Depending on environmental conditions, fruit ripening can last up to ten months, so fruits of different sizes and different degrees of maturity are often found on one plant. The maximum weight of one fetus is up to two kilograms, but these are only rare cases under the most comfortable conditions.

The main distribution area of ​ ​ babaco is Ecuador, where it was grown by natives long before Europeans came. It later appeared in New Zealand, where today babako is widely cultivated on an industrial scale. In addition, the producing countries of this exotic fruit for us are Brazil, Peru, Greece, Italy and Spain.

And babako is grown in order to obtain edible fruits and their juice. The main value of these fruits lies in their excellent taste qualities, which were the immediate reason for its mass cultivation. So, unlike fresh papaya fruit, the somewhat sour taste and rich babako aroma resembles strawberries, pineapple, orange and kiwi at the same time.

As a rule, babako fruits are consumed fresh - for example, individually or as part of fruit salads. Due to the special taste, babako is used to prepare delicious jams, yogurts, juices, syrups, jelly and ice cream. The taste bouquet of this aromatic fruit emphasizes meat dishes well, and it is customary to make concentrates based on processed fruits.

In addition to excellent taste qualities, the properties of babako that are useful for the human body are also known. As in all fruits from the papaya genus, this hybrid also contains papain, an enzyme that helps the absorption of protein. In addition, babako fruits have a lot of vitamins (in particular, a high content of ascorbic acid, thanks to which the fruits do not discolor during cutting), minerals and salts.