Fruits in the Dominican Republic: by Domingo Marte

There is an excellent work published by Domingo Marte on Dominican fruits. The book Frutas en Republica Dominicana is a visual exhibition that exposes the country’s fruit culture’s vitality throughout the small island nation.

Many will be surprised when they open the book and find fruits that you never knew could exist in the territory. For this purpose, the Agricultural Engineer Domingo Marte traveled for more than two years to the most remote places in the country and consulted with dozens of experts in the field dedicated to growing some of these most exotic fruits.

The book itself is an encyclopedia because each species’ explanations and history highlight the immense work done to complete this fascinating work.

The photos are also spectacular. Whoever opens its pages will have the opportunity to delve into the origins of many of the island’s favorite and widely known fruits such as mango, owl, pineapple, banana, melon, orange, avocado, and watermelon, but little by little will go into those fruits once widely consumed, but currently in extinction and others virtually unknown. For example, the caimito, the anon, the Sayulita Soliman, the carambola, the kaki, the cherimoya, and the araza are hardly found in the markets.

Many of them will bring back pleasant memories when readers were young because those fruits were regularly found on their houses’ patios.

But the excitement comes later. In his jungle adventure, Domingo begins to identify other fruits that many do not know about or are only produced on private farms. For example, the myrtle, the balata Bignay, Calamodin, durian, date, carissa and cas, cotoperi, gina or Jina, imbe, jambolan, and so on, dozens of other exotic and almost unknown fruits appear through the book and come to life.

It should be said that this publication, more than an illustrative work to entertain yourself by looking at beautiful photos, is an educational work even for those who study agronomy in universities.

The work was sponsored by JAC, the Ministry of Agriculture, Banco Popular Dominicano, Ferquido, Propagas, Induban, Central Romana, Banco Central, Induban, Consorcio Cítricos Dominicanos and R.H. Media & Co. It is a great contribution to Dominican fruit growing.