Passionfruit Flavored Water

Passionfruit, Passiflora edulis Sims - of the estimated 500 species of Passiflora, in the family Passifloraceae, only one, P. edulis Sims, has the exclusive designation of passionfruit, without qualification. Within this species, there are two distinct forms, the standard purple, and the yellow, distinguished as P. edulis f. flavicarpa Deg., and differing not only in color but in certain other features as will be noted further on.

General names for both in Spanish are granadilla, parcha, parchita, parchita maracuyá, or ceibey (Cuba); in Portuguese, maracuja peroba; in French, grenadille, or couzou. The purple form may be called purple, red, or black granadilla, or, in Hawaii, lilikoi; in Jamaica, mountain sweet cup; in Thailand, linmangkon. The yellow form is widely known as yellow passionfruit; is called yellow lilikoi in Hawaii; golden passionfruit in Australia; parcha amarilla in Venezuela.

Brazil has long had a well-established passionfruit industry with large-scale juice extraction plants. The purple passionfruit is there preferred for consuming fresh; the yellow for juice processing and the making of preserves.

In Australia, the purple passionfruit was flourishing and partially naturalized in coastal areas of Queensland before 1900. Its cultivation, especially on abandoned banana plantations, attained great importance and the crop was considered relatively disease-free and easily managed. Then, about 1943, a widespread invasion of Fusarium wilt killed the vines and forced the undertaking of research to find fungus-resistant substitutes. It was discovered that the neglected yellow passionfruit is both wilt-and nematode-resistant and does not sucker from the roots. It was adopted as a rootstock and plants propagated by grafting were soon made available to planters in Queensland and northern New South Wales.

The Australian taste is strongly prejudiced in favor of the purple passionfruit and growers have been reluctant to relinquish it altogether. Only in the last few decades have they begun to adopt hybrids of the purple and yellow which have shown some ability to withstand the serious virus disease called "woodiness".

New Zealand, in the early 1930's, had a small but thriving purple passionfruit industry in Auckland Province but in a few years the disease-susceptibility of this type brought about its decline. Good local marketing and export prospects have brought about a revival of efforts to control infestations and increase acreage, mostly in the Bay of Plenty region. Today, fruits and juice are exported. A profitable purple passionfruit industry has developed also in New Guinea.

In Hawaii, seeds of the purple passionfruit, brought from Australia, were first planted in 1880 and the vine came to be popular in home gardens. It quickly became naturalized in the lower forests and, by 1930, could be found wild on all the islands of the Hawaiian chain. In the 1940's, a Mr. Haley attempted to market canned passionfruit juice in a small way but the product was unsatisfactory and his effort was terminated by World War II. A processor on Kauai produced a concentrate in glass jars and this project, though small, proved successful. In 1951, when Hawaiian passionfruit plantings totalled less than 5 acres (2 ha), the University of Hawaii chose this fruit as the most promising crop for development and undertook to create an industry based on quick-frozen passionfruit juice concentrate. From among Mr. Haley's vines, choice strains of yellow passionfruit were selected. These gave four times the yield of the purple passionfruit and had a higher juice content. By 1958, 1,200 acres (486 ha) were devoted to yellow passionfruit production and the industry was firmly established on a satisfactory economic level.