If you're a mango lover, then right about now, you're probably counting down the day until the next mango season. You've got a long wait, since it's just November, but what if you could make mango juice right now? Or a dragonfruit mojito in December?
Well, now you can. That's because the Belize Marketing and Development Corporation has partnered with farmers from Cayo, Orange Walk, and Stann Creek to package and distribute frozen fruit pulp. This process extends the shelf life and allows restaurants and hotels to have favored fruits - NOT FROM CONCENTRATE - even out of season.
The senior projects officer at the BMDC told us more.
Sergio Tillett, Senior Projects Officer, BMDC
"In the past we had had farmers just losing a lot of their fruit because yes we have a market, a local market, where we only consumes so much. Then the excess fruits would normally go to waste or some people would try to do jams at home but they couldn't use all the fruit they had."
"So our managing director decided that we could start work on a program where we could freeze these bulbs and in that way we prolong the shelf life to one more year. So in December if you want to have a mango, whenever there's no mango in the country, you could get your pulp thaw out and you could have fresh mango juice in December."
"At the moment it's only available in our branches. We have branches in Belize City, we have branches in Big Falls, we have a branch in San Pedro and here in Orange Walk. These are the main ones but from our branches we do distribution so in case there's any resort or any hotelier or any restaurant that are interested we could deliver for them."
"They could surely put it on their menu now because in times it's always while season but now once we have the pulps that should be year round. So if they want to use dragonfruit in February when there's no production they can still get it because the fresh pulps are there.
"Our mixologist here present today is doing mixed drinks both alcoholic and non-alcoholic but also we're also showcasing like for example pastry. We have cheesecake with dragonfruit topping, we had ice cream just a while ago that the attendees enjoyed. We could make fresh juices out of these and then also slushes. So different uses for the pulps that we have."
Servulo Baeza, CEO, Ministry of Agriculture
"The Ministry of Agriculture and BMDC is working very closely together to diversify production of some of these fruits concentrating mainly on soursop, pitahaya, passion fruit and we even mango, because you know we might consider mango like more common but you know it's very seasonal and during the season there's a lot of waste so we're incorporating mango also."
"What we're trying to do is to diversify our agricultural base so we're encouraging our farmers to go into some of these products. For instance a farmer, let's say in Corozal or Orange Walk that does sugar cane, can take one acre and plant one acre pitahaya and he will have an additional revenue outside of just his revenue that he gets from Sugar Cane. Certainly not only in only Orange Walk and Corozal but all over. One of the things that we need to do is to provide that link also between what we produce and the tourism sector."
"So we see that this is a good opportunity because the tourism sector has a high demand for these type of juices, for these types of products. So we're working like today for instance in collaboration with Orange Walk BTIA chapter".
"We have this demonstration for all the different restaurants and all the different bars and you know, places that sell drinks for them to see how you could use these products for to add on to your list and to have some more exciting and exotic drinks."
