What is An Acai Berry?
The fruit of the Acai palm is a not, in fact, a berry at all. Even though it is consistently referred to as the acai berry, it is a drupe. For the purposes of clarity, I will use the phrases acai berry and acai drupe interchangeably in this article.
The Acai berry is about 25mm in diameter, and looks a lot like a grape. Inside the berry is a single large seed that takes up a good proportion of the total volume. The flesh around this seed is quite hard and contains much of the pulp that makes up the increasingly popular acai berry pulps and juices that we see.
The berry grows in groups of between 700 and 900 fruits on very tall acai palms; each palm can produce 2 crops on an annual basis. The acai palms are native to tropical regions in Central and South America and tend to like to grown in flood plains and swamps. the palm itself is tall and slender, often growing as high as 30 meters The acai palm is cultivated — and its fruit harvested — almost primarily due to the huge explosion in the demand for acai juices, pulps and products.