Brazil: The açaí, an Amazonian fruit that conquered the world

Pure, sweetened with guarana, fruit or granola, açaí is a fruit of Amazonian origin that in recent decades has jumped from the Brazilian table to the counters of the world. What is it and where does it grow? The açaí tree, also called açaí or açaízeiro, is a palm tree native to the Amazon region that can exceed 20 meters in height. Its fruits, small black berries with a fine pulp, are extracted manually by the producers, who climb the palm trees to cut the clusters when the fruit is ripe. The vast majority of production comes from flood-prone areas of the Amazon, where açaí is native, but there are also plantations on the mainland. In the past, the palm trees only bore fruit during the harvest (from August to January), but the improvement of agricultural techniques has made it possible to maintain a certain volume of production for the rest of the year. Production boom Brazil is the world's leading producer of açaí and more than 90% of production comes from the northern state of ...