Rongrien

Rongrien is the dominant commercial rambutan of Thailand and the clone most often exported, most often written about, and most often offered by tropical-fruit nurseries outside Southeast Asia. Despite the Thai name it traces back to a chance seedling that grew near a school on Penang island in Malaysia, which is why the Malaysian clone register carries it as R191 and why Malaysian growers sometimes call it 'Anak Sekolah'. It earned its position less on fruit size than on the combination of firm, comparatively dry aril, good postharvest life and dependable cropping under monsoon rainfall. USDA-ARS trials at Corozal and Isabela, Puerto Rico found Rongrien among the two cultivars with the highest pulp percentage (about 58 percent) of the eight tested, and it sat in the higher soluble-solids group at Corozal. In Australia's Northern Territory it consistently flowers later than the other clones, which growers use deliberately to stretch the marketing season.