It can also be cooked into a filling and layered into cakes, muffins, and other pastries.
Beyond beverages, Borojo is utilized in sweet applications, including simmering into compotes and jelly, cooking into a sauce, blending and freezing into ice cream, or flavoring candies. The pulp can also be mixed, strained, and incorporated into cocktails, wine, and fruit juices. Borojo is most frequently combined into beverages, and the soft pulp is blended with sweeteners, spices, and water to create a thick, shake-like drink. The fruits can be removed from their packaging and consumed raw, but many find the taste to be too bitter without added sugar.
The fruit’s pulp is also used in facial masks as a skin treatment and has historically been used as an embalming agent for corpses.īorojo is a delicate, creamy, and sticky fruit with a sweet-tart flavor showcased when used fresh. In traditional medicines of Colombia, Borojo is used medicinally to boost the immune system, curve hunger, and provide a natural energy source. The fruits are also rich in phosphorus to strengthen bones and teeth, fiber to stimulate the digestive tract, calcium to promote bone growth, and contain lower amounts of vitamin C and iron. Locally, the fruits are also considered a superfruit for their nutritional content and are frequently consumed as a revitalizing drink.īorojo is an excellent source of water-soluble B vitamins, specifically niacin, a nutrient used to keep the digestive system and nervous system working properly. In the modern-day, Borojo is one of the most profitable crops in Colombia, and the fruits are widely used for medicinal, culinary, and cosmetic purposes. The name Borojo was derived from Embera words “boro” or “head” and “ne-jo” meaning “fruit.” There are five recognized species of Borojo growing wild, with Alibertia patinoi being the primary species commercially cultivated. Borojo has been used by native Amazonian peoples, especially the Embera, and the fruits are only gathered once they fall naturally from the tree, maintaining balance in the fragile rainforest ecosystem. The bittersweet fruits are native to the Amazon rainforest and have been growing wild since ancient times. The flesh is considered bitter when consumed by itself and bears sweet, tangy notes reminiscent of tamarind, vanilla, plums, and rose hips.īorojo, botanically classified as Alibertia patinoi, is a tropical fruit that grows on a small evergreen tree reaching up to four meters in height belonging to the Rubiaceae family.
Borojo contains a high moisture content and adequate sugar and acidity levels, giving the fruits a complex, sweet-tart flavoring.
The flesh is brown, sticky, dense, and creamy, encasing many small oval seeds, and the number of seeds is highly variable, ranging from 90 to over 600 seeds in one fruit. Borojo is often found packaged in a plastic bag to maintain the ripe fruit’s delicate texture and shape. When unripe, the fruits are firm, green, and inedible, and as it matures, it transforms into a soft and malleable consistency with a red-brown to dark brown hue. Borojo is a small fruit, averaging 7 to 12 centimeters in diameter, and has a round to ovate shape, sometimes varying in appearance due to the fruit’s soft nature.