Dragon Fruit
Our customers use dragon fruit because of its striking appearance, mild flavor, and strong appeal in health-focused and premium products. Dragon fruit has a subtly тәт sweet taste that blends easily with other ingredients, making it versatile for use in beverages, smoothie bowls, desserts, and snacks. Its vibrant pink or red flesh, often speckled with small black seeds, enhances visual appeal and is especially valuable for creating eye-catching products and natural coloring. Dragon fruit is also rich in antioxidants, vitamin C, and fiber, supporting wellness and “superfood” marketing claims. Additionally, it is commonly processed into purees, powders, and frozen forms, which improve shelf life and make it convenient for large-scale manufacturing and consistent product development.
Dragon Fruit can be supplied as organic upon request
Botanical: Selenicereus Undatus
A Cactus-Born Legend
Dragon fruit, also known as pitaya, is a tropical fruit that comes from a type of cactus plant – it is commonly processed into dragon fruit juice concentrate or dragon fruit puree. It has a distinctive appearance, with bright pink or yellow skin and green scale-like protrusions, and can have either white or red flesh speckled with small black seeds. The fruit is native to Central America but is now widely grown in Southeast Asia and other tropical regions. Dragon fruit has a mild, slightly sweet taste and a soft, juicy texture. It typically grows in warm climates and is harvested multiple times a year due to the cactus plant’s ability to flower repeatedly under the right conditions.
Dragon fruit, or pitaya (Hylocereus / Selenicereus), is a climbing, night-blooming epiphytic cactus fruit indigenous to the tropical forests of Central and Northern South America and widely commercialized across Southeast Asia. Characterized by its leathery, scale-like outer bracts (pericarp), the fruit encloses a juicy, nutrient-dense pulp embedded with thousands of tiny, edible black seeds rich in essential omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. Beyond its crisp, mildly sweet taste, red-fleshed dragon fruit is one of nature’s most concentrated sources of betacyanins—the same class of water-soluble, nitrogenous pigments found in red table beets, delivering intense, radiant fuchsia-magenta coloration without the earthy, vegetable geosmin off-notes typical of beet extracts.
In commercial fruit ingredient processing, species and cultivar selection govern pigmentation, acidity, and sensory profile:
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Red-Fleshed Pitaya (Hylocereus polyrhizus / Selenicereus costaricensis): The undisputed commercial superstar for clean-label color and functional beverage formulation. Features deep crimson-to-purple skin and vibrant magenta-violet flesh. Dragon fruit juice concentrate delivers a gentle sweet-tart flavor with earthy-berry top notes and extraordinarily high betacyanin levels, functioning as a premier natural colorant, smoothie base, and craft brewing ingredient.
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White-Fleshed Pitaya (Hylocereus undatus): Characterized by bright pink-red skin enclosing snow-white, translucent flesh studded with black seeds. It offers a milder, refreshing flavor profile reminiscent of pear, melon, and kiwi with balanced sub-acidity. White dragon fruit purees and IQF dices provide visual particulate contrast and clean, neutral tropical sweetness without staining matrixes pink.
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Seed-In vs. Seedless Purees: Seed-in draogn fruit puree retains whole, intact black seeds suspended in the pulp, providing authentic visual appeal, natural dietary fiber, and mouthfeel for smoothie bowls and yogurts. Seedless puree is passed through fine finisher screens (0.020″ to 0.033″ mesh) to eliminate all seeds, yielding a silky, velvety paste engineered for automated liquid beverage bottling lines.
Brothers International partners with origin processors equipped with custom low-shear peeling and de-seeding lines. This technology cleanly isolates the succulent pulp from the bitter outer pericarp without cracking the brittle inner seeds, eliminating the risk of astringent tannins or oxidized seed lipids contaminating the ingredient stream.
Global Sourcing Through the Brothers International Network:
Dragon fruit cacti require warm, frost-free tropical and subtropical microclimates with ample sunshine, high temperatures, and well-drained volcanic or sandy loam soils. While drought-tolerant, commercial yield and high natural Brix require controlled drip irrigation and trellis support systems. Brothers International connects North American manufacturers to premier global growing basins through our established network of audited suppliers.
We source high-grade dragon fruit ingredients from leading agricultural regions:
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Southeast Asia (Vietnam): The global processing powerhouse. Provinces including Binh Thuan, Long An, and Tien Giang represent the world’s largest commercial cultivation belts for both red and white pitaya. Modern facilities operate high-capacity automated pulping, de-seeding, vacuum evaporation, and cryogenic blast-freezing tunnels adjacent to certified plantations.
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Central & South America (Ecuador, Nicaragua, Colombia & Mexico): Ecuador’s Palora region and Nicaragua supply high-solids red pitaya dragon fruit purees and specialty organic lots. Ecuador also leads global commercial production of sweet yellow-skinned pitahaya (Selenicereus megalanthus).
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Thailand & Indonesia: Secondary tropical processing hubs offering strategic harvest diversification, organic-certified plantations, and competitive trans-Pacific maritime freight.
By coordinating supply across Vietnam, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Thailand, Brothers International insulates your manufacturing facility against localized weather anomalies, typhoon seasons, and ocean shipping bottlenecks.
Harvest Cycles & Continuous Supply Management:
In Southeast Asia (Vietnam), natural daylight induces dragon fruit flowering from May through October, resulting in multiple rolling harvest waves every 25 to 30 days. To eliminate seasonal supply gaps, Vietnamese processors utilize artificial night-lighting (incandescent/LED bulb grids) across orchards during the short daylight months from November through April. This supplemental lighting induces continuous off-season blooming, establishing a true 52-week annual processing calendar. In South America, peak harvesting runs from December through April.
Managing this continuous international production schedule and coordinating cold-chain shipping routes is a core competency of Brothers International. Our operations and logistics teams oversee multi-quarter inventory allocations, deep-frozen ocean transport (-18°C), USDA/FDA import clearances, C-TPAT supply chain security, and strategic warehousing across North America. Whether your facility requires frozen 5-gallon pails of seed-in red puree for R&D testing, 65° Brix clarified concentrate in drums, or bulk master cartons of 3/8″ IQF dices, our network guarantees ready inventory year-round.
Rigorous Quality Control, Traceability & Compliance:
Processing into industrial dragon fruit juice concentrate, dragon fruit puree, dragon fruit IQF IQF formats demands strict technical oversight, specifically regarding betacyanin thermal retention, mechanical seed elimination (in seedless purees), enzymatic browning prevention, and microbiological safety. Every supplier within the Brothers International network undergoes a comprehensive auditing process to guarantee complete supply chain traceability, sustainable farming practices, fair labor standards, and strict compliance with USDA, FDA, and international food safety standards.
Through our network, we deliver dragon fruit ingredients backed by complete technical documentation and top-tier industry certifications, including GFSI benchmarks (BRC, SQF, FSSC 22000), USDA Organic (NOP), Kosher, Non-GMO, and Halal standards. Our quality assurance protocols include spectrophotometric betacyanin quantification, pesticide residue screening, heavy metal testing, microbial validation (Salmonella and Listeria negative), particle fineness, Bostwick viscosity, and Brix adherence.
The Brothers International
Quality Promise
Brothers International and its 4 divisions, Brothers Ingredients, Dennick Fruit Source, Hosh International and Food Partners, are trusted global importers of premium ingredients to major food and beverage manufacturers in North America. We deliver consistent quality and supply across every format the industry demands. Our Dragon Fruit is sourced from the earth’s prime growing regions where farming expertise, climate and soil composition come together to produce Dragon Fruit of exceptional caliber. All of our suppliers undergo a rigorous vetting process to ensure we work with only the highest-quality processors and can fully guarantee traceability, sustainability, and compliance with all international regulations.
Each of our divisions has a specialized operations team to manage shipments and coordinate with customers and suppliers. They work closely with our in-house customs team to ensure efficient clearance, and collaborate with the USDA and FDA to maintain full regulatory compliance. This ensures your ingredients move seamlessly through every stage of import, arriving on time and ready for production with complete confidence. With decades of sourcing expertise and a strong commitment to customer success, you can count on Brothers International to deliver the premium ingredients your products require.
Industry Glossary
A Reference Guide for Fruit Ingredient Terminology
Check out our glossary for a consolidated reference of commonly used terminology across the global fruit ingredient industry. It provides straightforward definitions and context for the language and concepts referenced throughout the industry.
