Amateur Agronomists

The Perfect Sweetsop
A civil servant from Buleleng, Bali, self-taught himself how to crossbreed superior seeds. His influence has spread through Java and Bali.

No ordinary sweetsops hung on the trees at the Superior Fruit nursery in Singaraja, Bali. The skin of the fruit was a striking dark red, not green like the usual sweetsops (annona squamosa) found in Indonesia, and neither was it covered in bumps. Instead the surface was smooth with little dots. When it was broken open, the texture of the flesh was more like a common sweetsop, clear white in color. The taste was sweet and creamy like ice cream.

The fruit, also known as sugar-apple, is fairly large. Only two or three make a kilogram. Sweetsops from the nursery contain only a few dozen seeds, an improvement over the common sweetsop which usually has a cumbersome 90 to 100 seeds. While the common variety goes rotten in three days, the crossbred nona sri variety can last for a week.

November 11, 2014