From the Handbook of Energy Crops, unpublished
by James A. Duke
Bactris gasipaes H.B.K.
Arecacea/Palmae
Pejibaye, Peach palm, Pewa, Peach nut, Pejibave, Pupunha
Uses
Folk
Medicine
Chemistry
Description
Germplasm
Ecology
Distribution
Cultivation
Harvesting
Yields
and Economics
Energy
Biotic
Factors
References
Uses
Pejibaye
fruits are especially high in vitamins A and C, and nicotinic acid.
They are eaten boiled in salty water, often with salt pork for
seasoning. The fruit is then peeled (the seed removed) and eaten plain
or with a dip of mayonnaise or cheese, or deep-fried or roasted. It may
be ground into meal, mixed with egg and milk and fried as tortillas.
Sometimes, pejibaye are the entire meal except for coffee or
molasses-sugar water as beverage. Boiled fruit is sold and eaten as
snacks in railway cars or on street corners in Costa Rica. Canned
pejibaye are available, and pejibaye halves and dip are served in bars
and at cocktail parties. Palm heart (palmito), composed of the tender
leaves before they emerge from the center of the top of the tree, is
salvaged from shoots or trees cut down, and eaten fresh. It tastes like
celery hearts and may be boiled and mixed with vegetables and eggs to
make a casserole. A fermented beverage may be made from the sap. A
chicha beer is made from unsalted cooked, mashed fruit, sometimes mixed
with plantain, and allowed to ferment. Its manufacture is illegal in
Costa Rica except in the indigenous reserves. When the price of
pejibaye is low, the leaves are stripped and fed to livestock; fruit is
fed to pigs and hogs; flowers of excess racemes are sometimes cut when
very young, chopped and eaten cooked with eggs, and when very
plentiful, fed to chickens. The outer 2.5–5 cm of the trunk,
exceptionally hard and resilient, is used to make lances, bows and
arrows, bedboards, hammer handles, siding for houses, beaters and
spindles for weaving. Hollowed out trunks serve as water troughs or
conduits, or as flower planters.
Folk Medecine
Peachpalm is a folk remedy for headache and stomachache (Duke and Wain, 1981).
Chemistry
Per
100 g, the fruit is reported to contain 196 calories, 50.5 g H2O, 2.6 g
protein, 4.4 g fat, 41.7 g total carbohydrate, 1.0 g fiber, 0.8 g ash,
14 mg Ca, 46 mg P, 1.0 mg Fe, 1346 mg b-carotene equivalent, 0.05 mg
thiamine, 0.16 mg riboflavin, 1.4 mg niacin, and 35 mg ascorbic acid.
Description
Tall,
spiny, clump-producing palm; trunk 14–17 m tall, frequently, when
seedling tree is about 1–5 years old, developing shoots at the base
which form a clump; spines black, 5–12 cm long, densely spaced
occurring on 70–99% of trunks in any grove, the spines growing in
annular bands 5–16 cm wide between the places of attachment of the
petioles to the trunk; about 0.5% of pejibaye trunks in Costa Rica are
virtually spineless; leaves up to 2 m long, dark green above, light
green beneath, arranged about 110° apart around the trunk, midrib with
short firm spines in 3 longitudinal stripes on its lower surface,
especially near the basal attachment, a new leaf being produced every
2–4 weeks, depending upon the vigor of the tree and the seasonal
climate; flowering raceme on trunk more abundant staminate flowers,
except for the terminal few cm of each branch of each raceme where only
staminate ones grow; when spathe opens, the pistillate flowers have
form of small fruits 3–4 times size of male flowers; stigmatic surfaces
cream-colored, sticky, receiving pollen dropping from its male flowers,
or from wind-blown or insect carried pollen, for first 2–3 days after
which they turn dark; male flowers usually drop off the raceme within
24 hours. Fruits variable in size, shape and color, up to 2–6 cm in
diameter and length, assuming a rounded outline, nippled, sometimes
cylindrical or pyramidal; fruit color constant on a given tree, from
yellow or green to orange or red or green-brown, though orange is most
common; some trees produce fruit with 2 or 3 colors segregated in
specific bands or quarters; fruits usually 1-seeded, a few have fused
seeds, and some are seedless, these having a special texture and flavor
making them highly desirable. Fl. twice a year; fr. September through
December. Seedless varieties have low fiber content in the pulp, a
strong skin, easy to peel, low water content, a firm dry texture, a
high oil content for good flavor and non-powdery texture and a skin
that develops superficial cracks considered a mark of good quality. The
shell of the seed is hard and the meat not sufficiently tender or juicy
to be eaten regularly, though it improves the value of the fruit as hog
feed.
Germplasm
Reported
from the Middle American and South American Centers of Diversity, peach
palm or cvs thereof is reported to tolerate clay, disease, fungus, high
pH, laterite, slope, and waterlogging. 'Rayada' (striped fruit), 'Liso'
(smooth fruit), 'Marapa' (small yellow-green fruit), 'Piranga' (yellow
fruit tinged with red), and 'Tapire' (spineless) are some of the named
variants.(2n = 30).
Distribution
New World palm, probably native to the Amazon rain-forests, now cultivated from Nicaragua and Honduras to northern Bolivia.
Ecology
Pejibaye
palm requires a high temperature, averaging in excess of 18°C, and
never dropping to freezing; heavy rainfall over 250 cm annually and no
periods of drought. It thrives in loamy soils developed from river
alluvium. It grows from sea level to about 1000 m, but crop becomes
progressively smaller at 700 m. Ranging from Subtropical Dry to Wet
through Tropical Moist to Wet Forest Life Zones, peach palm is reported
to tolerate annual precipitation of 7 to 40 dm (mean of 5 cases =
19.9), annual temperature of 19 to 25°C (mean of 5 cases 23.4), and pH
of 6.5 to 7.7 (mean of 2 cases = 7.1).
Cultivation
Pejibaye
may be propagated from seeds, but is usually grown by vegetative
reproduction. It has been found useful to mix 10 g of Aldrin to a
loosened soil in an excavated hole, preparatory to planting, plant the
shoot no more than 2.5 cm above the roots growing from the woody base
of the shoot. Care must be taken in cutting the shoots free from the
parent plant. A 10 cm broad chisel, 90 cm long is driven down through
the tough roots of the parent, to sever the shoot stalk with a clean
cut. All roots should be cut and prying or breaking avoided. Trees
could be spaced at 7m x 7m. Weed 2 or 3 times a year.
Harvesting
Fruit
ripens in September through December, with the highest yields obtained
in October and November. The racemes of ripe fruits are picked; up to
13 full sized racemes may be found on a single trunk. The palms flower
twice a year. If sufficient moisture is available during growing
season, two crops a year may be obtained. Racemes of fruits become
higher up the trunk as the palm grows taller, so that a chisel-like
blade at the end of a pole is used to cut or pull the racemes down.
Various methods (even nets) are devised to soften the fall of the
raceme on the ground. Trees are known to be 50 to 100 years old in
Costa Rica. Ripe fruit has poor keeping qualities as mold sets in after
3–5 days; they are sold in local markets, used domestically or
manufactured into more lasting products.
Yields and Economics
A
fruit cluster may contain 75 to 300 fruits and weigh 12 kilograms. Each
trunk produces about 7 bunches at the principal harvest and 3 at a
secondary harvest. Since 4 or 5 trunks are generally permitted to grow
from each clump, the average yield is about 90 kg per year, which with
a spacing of 100 clumps per hectare would indicate a potential of 9,000
kg/ha. Duke (1978) reported 3,500 kg/ha. Labor cost for harvesting
fruit is about 11.4% the total value of the crop. Although grown in
southern Central America and northern South America, pejibaye is not
extensively cultivated. There is much variability in the nutritional
components of the fruit; the red fruited variety contains the highest
amount of carotene. Some trees are found that produce a reddish oil on
boiling which is believed to be rich in carotene. Breeding should point
to spineless trees, bearing seedless fruit with a high carotene
content. This would make the crop more acceptable to the prospective
grower and more nutritious and palatable to the consumer. Palm heart
yields of 1.2 MT/ha are reported in Brazil, 2 MT in Costa Rica, where
palm hearts are larger in general.
Energy
Annual
productivity of fruits is estimated to range from 1 to 10 MT/ha, all of
which could be converted to alcohol or methane. The pulp could be used
for human or animal consumption, while the seeds could be burned as
fuel for the distillation of peach palm alcohol. Tolerating the
laterites on which cassava is also grown as an energy crop, peach palm
might be considered as the overstory perennial in a multistoried energy
farm, which should produce more alcohol per hectare than a monocropped
scheme. Recently in a proposal, C.R. Clement is quoted as suggesting
that small plot yields in Costa Rica have reached 30 MT/ha dry weight
(with up to 51% oil in the dry mesocarp), suggesting a genetically
possible 15 MT oil per ha.
Biotic Factors
Pejibayes are attacked by few diseases; e.g., Auerswaldia guilielmae and Phyllosticta guillielmaecola.
References
Duke,
J.A. 1978. The quest for tolerant germplasm. p. 1–61. In: ASA Special
Symposium 32, Crop tolerance to suboptimal land conditions. Am. Soc.
Agron. Madison, WI.
Duke, J.A. and Wain, K.K. 1981. Medicinal plants of the world. Computer index with more than 85,000 entries. 3 vols.
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