Binjai

Binjai takes its name from the city of Binjai in North Sumatra and is the best-known Indonesian rambutan, now planted far outside its home range in Malaysia, northern Australia, Hawaii and Central America. Indonesian horticultural writing treats it as the benchmark dessert clone, and it is one of the handful of cultivars the USDA maintains in its Hilo germplasm collection. ITFNet describes it simply as a large, sweet, elongated fruit with firm pulp and a red peel, which is the reason it displaced older local selections in Java and Sumatra markets. University of Hawaii researchers used Binjai as the reference cultivar in their four-year fruit-development study near Hilo, tracking individual fruits from anthesis to maturity. Northern Territory growers group it with the early-flowering clones, so it tends to open the season.