08 March 2009
MUSCAT -- Taiwan has a very special fruit, the wax apple that can be cultivated in a desert country like Oman. The Taiwanese are willing to help here.
They are, in fact, keen to take up production of this fruit. "Omanis must seize this opportunity," says Jackson Lee of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office, Muscat, or else they will lose out to China, which is planning cultivation of this fleshy fruit in a big way.
Wax apple as the Taiwanese call it, is a fleshy fruit native to the tropics. The fruit is a bell-shaped edible berry, with colours ranging from white, pale green, green, red, purple, crimson, to deep purple or even black.
When mature, the tree is considered a heavy bearer and can yield a crop of up to 700 fruits. The ripened fruit varies in hue and can be light pink to a dark, almost purple, red. One of the most highly-prized and sought after wax apples in Taiwan are 'black pearls', which are purplish-red. Healthy wax apples have a light sheen to them. A ripe wax apple only resembles an apple on the outside in colour. It doesn't taste like one. It has neither the fragrance nor the density of an apple. The flavour is a bit like a snow pear. The liquid to flesh ratio of the wax apple is comparable to a watermelon. It's remarkably refreshing and juicy so people in this part of the world are going to love it. Unlike either apple or watermelon, the wax apple's flesh has a very loose weave.
MUSCAT -- Taiwan has a very special fruit, the wax apple that can be cultivated in a desert country like Oman. The Taiwanese are willing to help here.
They are, in fact, keen to take up production of this fruit. "Omanis must seize this opportunity," says Jackson Lee of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office, Muscat, or else they will lose out to China, which is planning cultivation of this fleshy fruit in a big way.
Wax apple as the Taiwanese call it, is a fleshy fruit native to the tropics. The fruit is a bell-shaped edible berry, with colours ranging from white, pale green, green, red, purple, crimson, to deep purple or even black.
When mature, the tree is considered a heavy bearer and can yield a crop of up to 700 fruits. The ripened fruit varies in hue and can be light pink to a dark, almost purple, red. One of the most highly-prized and sought after wax apples in Taiwan are 'black pearls', which are purplish-red. Healthy wax apples have a light sheen to them. A ripe wax apple only resembles an apple on the outside in colour. It doesn't taste like one. It has neither the fragrance nor the density of an apple. The flavour is a bit like a snow pear. The liquid to flesh ratio of the wax apple is comparable to a watermelon. It's remarkably refreshing and juicy so people in this part of the world are going to love it. Unlike either apple or watermelon, the wax apple's flesh has a very loose weave.
© Times of Oman 2009
