Vendor displays the many types of mangoes that can be found around the Virgin Islands. Photo: Javon Liburd/ VINO

Ms. Arona Fahie Says the festival serves as a opportunity for locals to showcase the many different things that can be done with mangoes. Photo: Javon Liburd/ VINO

Vendor displays the many types of mangoes that can be found around the Virgin Islands. Photo: Javon Liburd/ VINO

Local Vendors gather at the Noel Lloyd Positive Action Movement Park to showcase the different things they do with mangoes. Photo: Javon Liburd/ VINO

Organised by the Department of Agriculture and supervised by Deputy Chief Agricultural Officer Ms. Arona Fahie-Forbes, the festival was created to showcase different ways they can use mangoes.

The festival is currently underway at the Noel Lloyd positive Action Movement Park today July 13, 2012.

According to Ms. Fahie-Forbes, the festival creates an opportunity for local vendors to display their different techniques and recipes that comes from mangoes.

One local vendor exclaimed, “It is a shame that the people of the VI are strangers of the different methods to eat mangoes, there are so many things and so little mangoes.”

Ms. Fahie-Forbes added that for the first time this year, vendors were also encouraged to enter a Mango Juice Competition, where they make the mango juice at home and bring it to be judged.

The criteria for the competition are according to flavor, consistency, color and container (must be clean and appropriate).

The judges for the competition are Sylvia Faulkner from the Department of Agriculture, Altagracia Hodge and James Lettsome.

The winner will receive a $25 certificate from Radio Doctor and other prizes that were donated by different businesses.

The juice competition will be followed by a ‘bobbing of mango competition’ and a mango eating competition.

Along with the festival, a poetry competition was also held, with the theme being about mangoes.

The competition was divided into three sections: Adult, Teen, Child.

The deadline of the competition that started earlier in the year was on June 28, and received 24 submissions with 13 of them being from Jost Van Dyke.

The top three prizes went to Velma D Chung - When God Made Mangoes (Adult), Anath Blyden- Mango Mango (Teen) and Davaughn Hodge- Mangoes Every Where (Child).

Local varieties of mangoes expected to be on display include the ‘Julie’, ‘Boar-Hog’, ‘Tina’, ‘Rocky’, ‘Bandy’, ‘Bulltone’, ‘Touch-me-not’, Hardskin’, ‘Cottage’, ‘Kidney’, and ‘Cutlass’.

The Mango Array and Tropical Fruit Festival serves to promote the cultivation, caring and maintenance of traditional fruits such as mangoes in the Virgin Islands while aiming to unite producers’, supermarkets, proprietors and the community in one to create a sense of identity and an overall greater appreciation for the tastes and varieties of local fruits.