Soursop is a tropical fruit that grows in hot, humid lowland regions across the Caribbean, Central and South America, West Africa, and Southeast Asia. It cannot survive frost, and most of the world's supply comes from small farms clustered in a belt that sits close to the equator.
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Soursop Spines Are Soft: Fruit From Colombian Farms
Our soursop is sourced in Colombia, and the extract is made in Dallas, Texas.
The tree itself
Soursop is Annona muricata, a name worth knowing because it has a lot of aliases. Depending on where you are in the world it is called graviola, guanabana, corossol, or sirsak. Same fruit, same species, different country.
It is a lowland tree. The ceiling is roughly 1,000 metres elevation, and below that it wants year-round warmth, high humidity, and soil that drains well. It grows fast and can begin bearing fruit within a few years of planting. The fruit itself is dark green, heart-shaped to oval, and covered in soft curved spines that bend rather than prick. Inside the white pulp is fibrous and intensely fragrant, somewhere between pineapple and strawberry with a sour edge.
Where it grows
The Caribbean and Central America are home to some of the oldest cultivation of the fruit.
Countries like Jamaica, Puerto Rico, and Costa Rica have grown it for generations, and it shows up in local markets as juice, pulp, and candies.
South America is a major production region. Colombia, in particular, has substantial lowland tropical territory that sits well within the range the tree requires. Brazil, Peru, and Venezuela all produce it as well.
West Africa adopted soursop through trade routes centuries ago, and it is now well-established in countries such as Nigeria and Ghana, where it is grown both for domestic consumption and for export.
Southeast Asia is one of the largest growing regions by volume. Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Malaysia all cultivate it widely. In those countries it is typically called sirsak or guyabano.
Southern Florida is the northernmost edge of where it grows commercially in the United States.
It survives there because the climate stays warm year-round, but a single frost can kill the tree, so it is not grown at scale anywhere in the continental US outside that narrow coastal strip.
The relatives people confuse it with
This is worth clearing up because the confusion is everywhere online.
Soursop has two close relatives in the Annona family that are commonly sold and photographed alongside it, and they are not the same fruit.
Sugar apple, or sweetsop, is Annona squamosa. It looks similar from a distance but the skin is divided into rounded segments rather than covered in spines, and the flesh is much sweeter with less of the sour note. Different tree, different flavor, different nutritional profile.
Cherimoya is Annona cherimola. This one is often called the world's best-tasting fruit and it gets confused with soursop frequently. It grows at higher elevations than soursop, which is why you find it more often in Andean countries. The skin is smoother and the flesh is custard-like and sweet without the sour edge.
"Custard apple" is where it gets genuinely confusing, because that name is used loosely for several different Annona species depending on which country you are in. In Australia it often refers to Annona atemoya, a hybrid. In India it is frequently used for sugar apple. In the Caribbean it sometimes refers to cherimoya. It does not reliably mean soursop, and it does not reliably mean any single fruit. If a product is labeled custard apple and you want soursop specifically, the Latin name Annona muricata is the only check that holds.
Why sourcing geography matters
Where a plant grows affects what it is exposed to, how it is handled, and how long it travels before processing. Soursop deteriorates quickly after harvest, which is part of why liquid extract exists in the first place: processing close to the source locks in what the fruit contains before it breaks down.
Our supply starts in Colombia and the extract is finished in Dallas. Made in USA is accurate for the finished product. We do not print farm names or certifications we cannot verify.
We wrote the whole thing down.
Our free guide covers what soursop is, the forms it comes in, how people use it and what to watch for, without the contradictions.
*These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.*