WATCH: How to plant Dragon Fruit
Considered a bench market variety by many, this is
also one of the sweetest (hence its name) and tastiest dragon fruit you can
grow!
Sugar Dragon is also slightly more cold tolerant than most other Dragon Fruit varieties. In addition, this variety is also more sun-burn resistant. This is mainly due to the rounded 'wings' on the thick, meaty stems of the plant that allow it to overcome these two most common issues when growing Dragon Fruit.
Sugar Dragon is always the first and last of the commercial cultivars to flower, and has as roughly two to three extra fruiting cycles compared to other cultivars in ideal climates.
The self fertile, white flowers, are also bigger than other dragon fruit, and open at night. Sugar Dragon is considered to be a universal pollinator and therefore one of the best varieties to plant with other varieties that do not set fruit.
Sugar Dragon bears copious amounts of egg shaped, small fruit. Although the fruit is is smaller than other cultivars, the weight of fruit produced by a given plant is comparable to other commercial cultivars. Brix readings on fruit are 20-21, about the sweetest one can expect dragon fruit to be!
The bright cerise pink of Sugar Dragons flesh is created by a cocktail of the potent super-antioxidants betanin, indicaxanthin, phyllocactin and hylocerenin and their related compounds.