More About Gac Fruits

Momordica Cochinchinnensis Spreng (Gac) is botanically classified as follows:


Family: Cucurbitaceae
Genus Momordica
Species: Cochinchinnensis


This rampagenous perennial vine was given the name Muricia cochinchinensis by Loureiro, a Portuguese missionary-priest who published Flora Cochinchinensis in 1790. Later, Sprengel concluded that the plant belonged in the Linnean genus Momordica and changed the name in 1826 . The Vietnamese name of Momordica cochinchinensis spreng is Day Gac . The momordica cochinchinensis plant is also indigenous to China, Moluccas (Burma), Japan, India, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Philippines, Malaysia, and Bangladesh .

The plant can be cultivated either from seeds or root tubers. Leaves are alternate and deeply 3-5 lobed with toothed margins. The leaf stalk is glandular. The gac plant is dioecious, that is the male and female pants are separate. Flowers are pale-yellow and solitary in the axil of the leaves.

The production of parthenocarpic fruits, which is of economic importance, can be accomplished using growth regulators in the female plant in the absence of male plants. However induced parthenocarpic fruits have no seed, whereas hand pollinated fruits contain 18 seeds per fruit on average.

The plant starts flowering about 2 months after planting root tubers. This flowering usually occurs in April and continues to July/ August and sometimes until September. On average, it takes about 18-20 days for a fruit to mature from emergence of the bud of the female flower. A plant produces 30 to 60 fruits on average in one season. The ripe fruit is picked from August to February.

Fruits of Momordica cochinchinensis are big, densely aculaeate, green in color and when ripe, become dark orange or red. Unlike the bitter gourd (Momordica Charantia), the exocarp (rind) of the gac fruit is hard, and covered with conical points one eighth inch high. There are two shapes of gac fruit available in Vietnam, oblong and almost round, however there are no differences in the ways the fruits are used or consumed.

There are also variations among different fruits with respect to their spine and fruit tips. In some fruits, the spines are smooth and dense, whereas in some, they are hard and thinly arranged. The oblong types are 6-10cm in length and round types are 4-6 cm in length.

In Vietnam , the oblong fruit weighs between 500g and 1600g and can be 10 to 13 cm long. Shadeque et al. reported that in Assam, the fruit weighs from 1 to 3 kg (35). Unlike bitter gourd, which is mostly harvested in the developmental stages, gac fruits in Vietnam are only picked at maturity when the fruit is bright red and seeds are hardened.

The mesocarp of the momordica cochinchinensis (gac) fruit is 1/2" thick, spongy and orange in color. The core is divided into cartilaginous chambers containing bright red fleshy seed pods . Each fruit has on average between 15 to 20 seeds. Seed are round, compressed and sculptured. Seed membrane and kernels contain oil and are used in traditional medicine.

There is no record of any use of the mesocarp. The average weight of the pulp is about 19% of the total fruit weight. An average gac fruit weighing 1kg yields approximately 190g of fruit pulp and 130g of seeds. The seed pulp of a ripe momordica cochinchinensis fruit is bright red in color and has a palatable bland to nutty taste.