.
1.3. Varieties of Jackfruit
Several studies including Hossain [27]; Saha et al. [28]; and Jagadeesh et al. [8] have reported diversity in jackfruit, based mainly on morphological, phenotypic, and organoleptic characteristics like the size of the tree, structure of the leaf, fruit form, age of fruit bearing, quality of the fruit flesh, their size, shape, density of spines, colour, texture, odor, quality, and period of maturity [18, 29].
According to Singh [30] and Vinning and Moody [31], there are at least 30 strains of jackfruit in the Indian subcontinent and 30 more types in Malaysia. In Sri Lanka, several jackfruit cultivars such as ‘Vela', ‘Varaka (Waraka)', ‘Peniwaraka', ‘Kuruwaraka', Singapore, or the Ceylon Jack are distributed [6].
However, there are two main varieties of jackfruit: firm and soft. In the firm variety, the perianth remains firm even at full ripeness, while in the soft variety the perianths become soft and fleshy on ripening [2].
The soft variety has fruits with small, fibrous, soft, and spongy flakes with very sweet carpels, whereas the firm variety is crunchy with crisp carpels and not sweet as the soft variety. The firm variety is considered to be of high quality [14]. Some studies have reported variations in the starch, total sugar, and reducing sugar contents of soft and firm types [2, 32].
1.4. Chemical Composition and Nutritional Value
The chemical composition of jackfruit varies depending on the variety. When compared with other tropical fruits jackfruit flesh and seeds contain more protein, calcium, iron, and Thiamine [18, 33, 34].
A study has explored that the ripe jackfruit is richer than apple, apricot, avocado, and banana in some minerals and vitamins [25].
The caloric content of jackfruit is low, where 100 g of jackfruit only contains 94 calories [35].
Table 1 depicts the composition of jackfruit according to the findings of several studies [18, 19, 36–39].
Table 1.
Composition of jackfruit (100 g edible portion).
