Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Açaí palm, a new variety

While at the home of Zacharias Oliveira a few days ago, I was surprised to learn of a new variety of açaí palm (Euterpe sp), one that produces fruit at a height of about two meters. The EMBRAPA scientists developed this one with the objective of facilitating harvest of the açaí fruit, which normally requires a a person akin to a trapeze artist to climb up the 20-30 meters palm to cut the stalk. In the attached image you can see the newly forming açaí berries on panicles, which are easily reached by anyone standing on the ground. As far as I know, these palms are still in a experimental phase.

2 comments:

Olle Pettersson said...

A happy day Steven! 9 days without pictures and notes from Santarem is a long time!

Olle

Anonymous said...

9 days are pretty long time for sure.