Philippine Travel Blog – The Travelers Guide to Philippine Destinations

Most people would hear the word Guimaras and immediately associate it with its sweetest mangoes. Guimaras mangoes are famous woldwide that it has been oftentimes referred to as the “World’’s Best Variety”.

When you visit the island of Guimaras in the Western Visayas region, you will see hundreds and hundreds of mango trees planted along the provincial roads. A majority of these plantations are found in the municipality of Jordan and the newly constituted municipality of Sibunag just west of the island.

The National Mango Research Institute has been doing a lot of research studies with the Guimaras variety which grows to just around 25 to 30 feet, unlike the bigger carabao mango varieties.

The local mango is being aggressively protected by the provincial government and local laws have been passed to prevent contamination of the strain. Up to today, no individual is allowed to bring in mangoes into Guimaras for fear that fruit diseases and bugs might infect the local variety.

Guimaras mangoes are processed locally and are exported directly to Europe, US and Japan fresh, or processed (candied, syrup, flavored delis and chips). A kilo of green mangoes can be bought at about Php25 to Php35 per kilo depending on the time of the year. However, these prices would shoot up to 3 to 4 times its local price once they are shipped to Metro Manila.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 10th, 2006 at 12:46 am and is filed under Food Trip, Guimaras. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.