Mango Success

Maha Chanok Seedling: Three Years from Planting

Our young mango trees have produced their first fruit. This week we have picked three fruits of varying size, the largest weighing more than a kilogram, from our Maha Chanok seedling.

The parent fruit were purchased in Cabramatta in January 2011 and the seeds were successfully sprouted, the strongest seedling being planted in January 2012. 

The Maha Chanok variety of mango is mono-embryonic in nature. Therefore, resultant seedling trees will not necessarily replicate the mother tree. 

Shop-purchased Maha Chanok mangoes

When ripened, however, our fruits bore a remarkable colour resemblance to the original fruit: background of lemon-yellow with a pink blush. The overall look, however, clearly was not that of a Maha Chanok mango, diverging in shape, being broader and less oblong, lacking the distinctive Maha curved shape. 

The flavour was very mild and the flesh was relatively fibre-free.  Two of the three mangoes were far larger than the original fruit: this may be attributed, however, to the young age of the tree.

This is a late season variety of mango. Because of the cooling autumn weather, we were forced to complete the ripening process by placing the picked fruit in our bagged rice supply. Nevertheless, we were thrilled to have home-grown ripe mangoes in late March and early April.

Earlier in the summer our seedling Nam Dok Mai tree, of the same age, produced two small fruit which, unfortunately split before fully ripening.