National Mango Day is celebrated annually on July 22. Summer season means the time for welcoming juicy, luscious bright yellow and green coloured mangoes. If mango happens to be your favourite fruit, too, then there is one thing you surely look for when buying this fruit — its sweetness. Of course, there are other factors that contribute to a customers’ choice of mango which includes the kind or variety.
However, at the end of it all, we are looking for its sweetness. So which variety of mango happens to be the sweetest of them all?
According to Guinness World Records, the sweetest mango in the world is found in the coastal region of Philippines, Zambales. The region is known for its coveted Carabao variant of mangoes which were declared the sweetest mangoes in the world in 1995 by the Guinness World Records.
According to a report by the Inquirer, Mangoes grown in Masinloc, Zambales, were found with a total soluble sugar of 23 percent, as mentioned in a 2013 report released after the 15th National Mango Congress hosted by the Zambales government.
A report by CNN mentions that sweetness had become so identical with Zambales’s Carabao variant that when the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) launched an annual mango festival in the province’s capital, they held a contest to find out the sweetest variety out of all the local produce. The first such festival was held in 1999 to mark the completion of a decade when Philippine mango exports soared.
The report further mentions that mangoes from the farms of Nida Malabed were awarded the sweetest mango in 1999. The winner was decided by panellists from the Department of Agriculture (DA) who used a refractometer, which is a device that measures sugar content. Mangoes from Malabed’s farm topped other categories like “PinakaMalaki” and “Best Quality” as well.
Malabed also worked with fruit experts to create a new hybrid variety of Carabao mangoes that were sweeter and more flavourful. CNN reports that in 2002, the DA’s National Seed Industry Council registered the Sweet Elena, named after Malabed’s mother, as a new Carabao strain that had 19 degrees Brix in sugar content.
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