Soncoya is another Tropical Exotic Fruit of Costa Rica, really worth to try, when your are traveling.
Botanical Name : Annona purpurea
Exotic fruit Soncoya is native of Central America and can be grown in Costa Rica. It is quite common in coastal lowlands from southern Mexico to Panama, Colombia and Venezuela. Soncoya has also been introduced into the Philippines and a few other Asian countries.
The fruits of Soncoya has spiky hard skin. The skin or hard spiky shell is brown-green, from small fruit to maturity. It is very aromatic when ripening.
It is hard to know when to pick the Soncoya since the skin does not change color.
It will keep in the fridge for two weeks.
You need to slice it in half with a knife, the skin was quite easy to cut through. The flesh is a bright orange with a lot of seed of 2½-cm-long and flesh sticking to the seeds. The Soncoya has a very pleasurable exotic peachy – apricot flavor. The fruit have great exotic sweet taste which can be eaten raw or can be made into juice.
Extracts from the seeds are poisonous which are mostly used as an insecticide. Juice from the fruit is sometimes used as a remedy for fevers. Its inner bark is used for preparing teas, often to treat dysentery.