Botryodiplodia sp. - Crops for the Future

Rambutan trees are either dioecious or monoecious with male or hermaphrodite flowers and
need cross pollination for fruit set. The petal-less flowers are very inconspicuous because of
their tiny size (2.5 to 5 mm) and their greenish colour. They are growing on long shafted and
much branched, to 30 cm long panicles and have a sweet smelling fragrance.
The fruit is maturing in 15 to 18 weeks after flowering and gets an ovoid, round or ellipsoid
shape with a pinkish-red, bright- or deep-red, orange-red, maroon or dark-purple, yellowishred
or yellowish colour (Figure 4). The size of the rambutan fruit varies from 3.4 to 8 cm
(BAERTELS, 1990, FRANKE, 1994 and MORTON, 1987a). The fruit has a thin parchment like
rind with tubercles from each of which extends a soft spine. These hairy spines are 0.5 to 2
cm long and have a red, pinkish or greenish-yellow colour (Figure 5).
Figure 4: Different shapes of the rambutan fruit: 1) oval, 2) ovoid and 3) ellipsoid (IPGRI, 2003)
Figure 5: The most important rambutan varieties in Sri Lanka: `Malwana Special´, `Malaysian
Yellow´ and `Malaysian Red
The white or rose-tinted and translucent 0.4 to 0.8 cm thick flesh is very juicy and covers one
ovoid to oblong almond-shaped dark seed which is 2.5 to 3.5 cm long and 1 to 1.5 cm wide.
Rambutan fruits have an exotic aroma which results out of the interaction of fruity-sweet and
fatty-green odours, with the possible contribution of civet-like sweetish, spicy and woody
notes (ONG, ACREE and LAVIN, 1998).
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