"As festivals celebrate the pawpaw for its tropical flavor and custardy texture, researchers explore its potential as a low-input, high-value crop that’s easy to grow organically."
"As the sun beats down from a cloudless morning sky across Horn Farm in York, Pennsylvania, Dick Bono ambles among his pawpaw trees, admiring their pale green fruits like a proud parent. In late July, the pawpaws are fist-sized and hard as a rock, still two months shy of being full-grown and ripe. But soon they’ll soften and sweeten into a fruit revered for its tropical flavor and texture—a blend of banana, mango, and pineapple, so soft it’s eaten with a spoon.
Pawpaws are America’s largest edible native fruit, and their ineffable mystique will bring thousands of visitors to the farm’s annual pawpaw festival in late September. They grow abundantly in the wild here in central Pennsylvania and across much of the fruit’s native range, which spans 26 states as far west as the Great Plains and from northern Florida to Maine. But the pawpaw’s two- to three-week harvest window, short shelf life, and delicate skin still make it anathema to the rigid needs of grocery stores and a rare find even at farmers’ markets.
Despite the inherent obstacles to enjoying a pawpaw—and perhaps, in part, because of them—interest in the fruit continues to grow. Festivals in several states, mostly throughout September, give people a chance to taste the fruit for the first time or celebrate an old favorite."
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