Sapodilla originates from tropical South America and was spread overseas by the Portuguese. The Portuguese established Sapodilla trees in South India, but it is uncertain when it arrived in Sindh. Some say it may have been introduced when Sindh was a part of the Bombay Presidency and it came with the immigrant Marhata Gujarati community, while others say that it was brought by Goa’s Portuguese Catholics, who established a church on Liari - present day Gulshan-e-Iqbal - in 1818, under license from Mir Karam Ali Khan Talpur, who granted them land and permission to establish a church to get Portuguese support for ammunition against the British in India. Post Independence it had been brought to Lower Sindh and Balochistan’s coastal regions.
Sapodilla, more popularly known as Chiku, is a soft, juicy, sweet fruit that comes in two varieties - the ball shaped and the egg shaped. The latter is sweeter, and therefore more preferred. Some of these varieties yield 150kg per tree per year, even in home gardens where they are often neglected. Under field conditions they can produce at least double this yield.
Chiku is a table fruit and is served as a dessert. It also flavours cold drinks, milk-shakes, confectionaries, cakes, jams, jellies, ice-cream and snacks. Chiku also provides raw material for the manufacture of industrial glucose and is often canned.
