Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 5
Tropical and Subtropical Fruits
Victor Galán Saúco, Maria Herrero and Jose I. Hormaza
Abstract
Production and commercialization of tropical and subtropical fruits have
strongly increased in the last decade, particularly in countries with subtropical and
Mediterranean climates, with important developmental advances due to significant
research efforts, including control of flowering, intensive cultivation systems and use
of growth regulators. This chapter covers general aspects such as the definition, clas-
sification and importance of tropical and subtropical fruits and their environmental
requirements. Due to the different growth behaviour of monoaxial and polyaxial spe-
cies different case studies covering some of the main tropical and subtropical fruits,
i.e. bananas and papayas (monoaxials) and avocado, mango and cherimoya (polyaxi-
als) are treated separately regarding their edaphoclimatic requirements for produc-
tion and crop management, making special emphasis in reproductive biology, a key
factor on the adaptation of tropical and subtropical fruits to different environments.
Keywords
Origin
·
Reproductive biology
·
Crop requirements
·
Geographical
distribution
Introduction
Tropical and subtropical fruits, in contrast with temperate fruits crops, can be
broadly defined by the following criteria (Galán Saúco
2003
): they have their origin
in the tropics or subtropics, are evergreen perennial crops, although some tropical
