Fairchild First

'Fairchild First' came out of the jackfruit breeding and selection programme at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Miami, part of a deliberate effort by curator Noris Ledesma to produce smaller-fruited, smaller-tree jackfruits appropriate to the American home garden rather than to plantation agriculture. The fruit is small and unusually smooth, because the spines flatten and open as it matures, and the flesh is firm and mild with very little latex, which makes it one of the tidiest cultivars to prepare. Fairchild's description notes that in some seasons the entire fruit is edible including the 'rag', the fibrous tissue between arils that is normally discarded, which effectively raises the useful yield well above the species norm. The tree is upright and of medium vigour and stays under 10 ft with pruning while still producing around 132 lb of fruit a year.