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Mauritia flexuosa

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Buriti (Mauritia flexuosa)
Cultivated buriti palm (Mauritia flexuosa), Boa Esperança ranch, Brazil.
Scientific name Mauritia flexuosa [1]
Genus Mauritia [1]
Family Arecaceae [1]
Order Arecales [1]
Common name Buriti, aguaje, moriche palm [2]
Native range Trinidad to southern tropical America [1]
Growth form Solitary, dioecious, evergreen swamp palm [2]
Mature height Commonly 35–40 m in natural stands [3]
Years to fruit About 7–8 years to first flowers and fruit; commercial crops reported from 12–20 years; dwarf forms from about 5–7 years [2][5]
Fruit Scaly drupe 4–7 cm long with oily yellow-orange pulp [4][2]

Buriti (Mauritia flexuosa), called aguaje in Peru and moriche in much of Spanish-speaking Amazonia, is a large, solitary swamp palm of tropical South America. It grows in seasonally or permanently flooded soils from Trinidad and the Guianas across the Amazon basin to Bolivia and southeastern Brazil. [1][2] The scaly, oil-rich fruit is eaten fresh or processed into juice, ice cream, flour and oil, and the species is dioecious, so a planting needs both male and female palms. [2][4]

Description[edit | edit source]

Buriti palm (Mauritia flexuosa) in Praça do Buriti, Brasília. Photo by Nevinho, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Buriti is a massive single-stemmed palm. Natural-stand palms typically reach about 35–40 m with a trunk 30–60 cm in diameter [3]; Brazilian material is described with solitary columnar stems to 25 m and diameters up to about 80 cm. [6] The crown carries 8–25 costapalmate leaves up to about 5.8 m long, and each adult plant produces roughly eight interfoliar inflorescences 2–3 m long. [2] In flooded soils the root system descends about 60 cm and then spreads horizontally for up to 40 m, with aerial roots that aid respiration in hydromorphic conditions. [7]

The fruit is a globose to ellipsoid drupe covered in thin, overlapping scales, light orange to dark red at maturity, with a bright yellow-orange oily mesocarp over a large pit; measured ranges run 4–6 cm long by 3–5 cm wide in Roraima material and 5–7 cm by 4–5 cm in the Peruvian literature. [4][2]

Cultivation[edit | edit source]

Buriti is a palm of wetlands: it grows in permanently or temporarily flooded depressions, floodplains, blackwater swamps and hydromorphic savanna, where it can form near-monospecific stands often exceeding 300 palms per hectare. [7] That tolerance for saturated, acid, organic soils is the key to its cultivation.

Soil and water[edit | edit source]

Site buriti where the soil stays wet or floods seasonally; the species tolerates continuous flooding and can be monodominant in swamps. [4] The Brazilian literature places it on swampy, hydromorphic, high-organic soils, and acid soils are the norm in its native stands. [8][3] In containers, first-hand grower advice is to keep the roots wet while the foliage stays dry and exposed; one r/palmtalk thread recommended very wet conditions in the hottest months and less water when cool weather slows growth, though location, climate and plant age were not stated. [9]

Sun and humidity[edit | edit source]

Regional planting guidance calls for full sun with at least 8–10 m between palms and a weed-free circle around each plant. [3][10] Because wild palms dominate the canopy of swamps and flooded forests, buriti behaves as an emergent, sun-demanding plant; the palm literature notes it can be mixed with many species as long as it is not shaded. [10] Air humidity in its native range is high, and the foliage stays emersed even when the roots are flooded. [4][9]

Seasonal changes[edit | edit source]

In the western Amazon the native rhythm is a marked wet–dry year: at the Roraima study sites rain falls mostly May–August with a dry season from December to March, while the palms stand in water or saturated soil for much of the year. [4] Fruit harvest in the Peruvian floodplain is seasonal, usually September–April; in the São Paulo seed-collection study, fruit was taken when reddish-brown and only after it had fallen. [7][6] Where buriti is planted on better-drained ground, keeping the root zone moist through the dry season mirrors the floodplain regime rather than imposing a summer-dry pattern on a wetland palm. [7]

Propagation[edit | edit source]

Buriti is propagated commercially by seed. The seeds are desiccation-sensitive: germination fell from 91% at 51% seed moisture to 47% at 26%, so seed should be handled promptly and kept moist. [6] They also carry a physical dormancy: in the 2023 factorial trial no seed germinated without scarification, and in the Flora study only one intact-operculum seed germinated while operculum-removed seeds began on day 9. [11][8] Removing the operculum, the hard cap over the germination pore, is therefore the standard first step. [8]

Adding gibberellic acid to scarified seed improves the result: GA3 at 500 mg/L for six hours on freshly extracted seed raised germination rate and accelerated it, with an embryo damage rate near 10%. [11] Imbibition in aerated water containing hydrogen peroxide is suitable only up to two days. [11] Untreated germination is slow and irregular, commonly 45–260 days; the best treatments shorten that spread. [11] In temperature trials, alternating 20–30 °C gave the highest rate (86%) and speed index regardless of light, with light having no significant effect; constant 25–35 °C also germinated quickly once the operculum was removed, while germination was poor at 15 °C and 40 °C. [6][8]

For seedlings, a six-month greenhouse comparison found the conventional 20×30 cm plastic bag filled with soil and tanned manure produced the best-quality plants; producers with more capacity can start in 180 cm³ tubes for two months and then transplant into the bag-and-manure container until six months. [11]

Flowering, fruiting, and harvest[edit | edit source]

Buriti is dioecious: individual palms are male or female, and wind is the primary pollen vector. In exclusion experiments in Roraima, branches caged to keep out insects set as much fruit as open controls, while cages that also blocked wind set significantly less; floral visitors (beetles, native stingless bees, Africanized honey bees and flies) carried little effective pollen, and fewer than 2% of flowering females produced no fruit. [4] Older accounts proposed beetle pollination, and one encyclopedia entry named the stingless bee Melipona seminigra merrillae as the pollen carrier, but the experimental evidence supports wind. [10] A planting needs at least one male for the females, and regional guidance is to keep several mature males in the field. [3][10]

Flowering and fruiting begin around 7–8 years when the palm reaches about 6–7 m, with commercial-scale production reported from about 12–20 years in the reviewed Peruvian literature. [2] A female produces roughly 4–8 infructescences, each raceme carrying 500–2,000 fruits. [7]

Wild fruit is traditionally harvested by felling the female palm, a practice that kills the tree; around Iquitos an estimated 24,000 palms a year were being cut in the mid-2000s to supply a local market of roughly 150 tonnes of fruit a month. [2] A landscape-scale study of northeastern Peruvian peatlands estimates that felling harvest has halved the region's potential fruit production and that climbing harvest could raise potential production by roughly 51%, worth about US$62 million a year. [12] In one floodplain community, adoption of a locally made climbing device reduced felling and increased interest in planting. [7] Managed open-field palms stay short enough to pick without felling. [3]

Fruit and uses[edit | edit source]

Aguaje fruit (Mauritia flexuosa) at the Lamas market, Peru. Photo by Kristi Denby / Archivo Centro Takiwasi, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The edible mesocarp is oily and is commonly softened by soaking the fruit in water or smothering it overnight in a plastic bag before eating. [3] It is eaten raw, dried into pulp or flour, and processed into the drink aguajina (buriti juice), ice cream, popsicles and sweets; the mesocarp is also pressed for oil. [2][3]

Pulp color and composition vary with the Peruvian type. In an analytical study of three morphotypes, mesocarp color tracked carotenoid content, and milk beverages enriched with each type retained carotenoids. [13] Oil from dried pulp is rich in oleic acid (73–79% of fatty acids), with beta-sitosterol and stigmasterol as the major sterols; laboratory oil yield was 44–46% by supercritical carbon dioxide extraction and about 24.6% from dried pulp by solvent. [14][15] In Colombian fruit from the Bita River, pulp plus peel made up about 40% of whole-fruit weight and the seed about 46%. [15]

Provitamin A carotenoids are the nutritional signature: the pulp has repeatedly been called the richest natural source of vitamin A, a superlative first published in a 1946 Brazilian report, and compiled vitamin A values run about 4,000–6,500 µg retinol equivalents per 100 g. [3] A Peruvian summary lists up to 260 mg beta-carotene per 100 g of pulp. [2] The two figures use different units and methods, so they are not directly comparable. [3][2]

The spongy trunk pith can store large amounts of starch, one palm-literature account citing up to 60% of dry weight and up to 60 kg per stem, and the pith is used as a sago-like food; sap from the cut inflorescence can be fermented into palm wine. [10]

Cultivars and selections[edit | edit source]

No formally registered cultivars appear in the reviewed literature; Peruvian aguaje is marketed by mesocarp color types. The yellow type (amarillo, including the pale posheco group) is the standard material for processed masa, drinks, ice cream and popsicles; the color type is red only on the outside of the pulp; and the shambo whole-red type is preferred for direct consumption and commands the highest local price, though it oxidizes fastest during processing. [2][13][14]

A dwarf aguaje (aguaje enano, shapishico) found near Iquitos, Nauta and Bagazán grows on better-drained tierra firme, fruits from about 5–7 years before the trunk reaches 1 m, and has been multiplied by the IIAP for cultivation; it is among the most useful forms for small orchards because it can be harvested without felling. [2][5] A distichous (fan-like) form with compressed leaf orders is also recorded, and it cannot produce inflorescences, so it should be avoided for fruit production. [2]

Pests[edit | edit source]

An insect survey around Iquitos (2000–2003) on cultivated dwarf aguaje recorded 18 species, eight rated as important pests: Eupalamides cyparissias bores galleries in the trunk and rachillae; Antiteuchus kerzhneri punctures rachillae, fruit and floral buds; Stenoma caterpillars mine rachillae; Clinodiplosis larvae destroy female floral buds; gall midges form galls in the fruit; and two weevils plus Tyrannion larvae feed in the fruit pulp. [5] The leaf feeders Brassolis sophorae and Opsiphanes cassina were secondary, and Rhynchophorus palmarum larvae tunnel in stems. [5] The list comes from one region and one cultivated form, so other stands will carry different pest pressure.

Photos[edit | edit source]

Moriche palm fruit (Mauritia flexuosa), eastern Ecuador. Photo by Dick Culbert, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Buriti (Mauritia flexuosa) flowers. Photo by Denis A. C. Conrado, Attribution license, via Wikimedia Commons.

References[edit | edit source]

Image credits[edit | edit source]

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