Long, fragrant Lucknow native — fibre-less and intensely sweet, eaten by squeezing the pulp from the skin.
Named after the village of Dasheri (or Dussehri) near Kakori in Lucknow district, Uttar Pradesh, where the original mother tree — known as the Dasheri-mother-tree — still stands and is over 200 years old.
The Dasheri — Dussehri in many North Indian transliterations — is the great mango of the Awadh plains, and arguably the most widely eaten premium variety in northern India. It takes its name from the village of Dasheri (or Dussehri) near Kakori on the outskirts of Lucknow, where the original mother tree — known as the Dussehri-mother-tree — still stands and is more than 200 years old. Every Dasheri grown commercially today is a grafted descendant of this single tree, and the original is protected as a heritage specimen by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research.
The Dasheri's history traces to the early 18th century in the orchards of the Nawabs of Awadh. The cultivar was reportedly selected at the Lucknow-area estate of Raja Mohammad Ansaar Zaidi at Kakori, and from there spread across the Doab plains of Uttar Pradesh, into adjacent Bihar, Uttarakhand, and Punjab, and eventually to Pakistan and Nepal. Today it is the single largest-volume premium mango cultivar in North India, with Lucknow's annual Mango Mahotsav festival built around its harvest.
Fruit-wise, Dasheri is elongated and oval, 150–250 g, with a smooth thin skin that turns from green to a clear yellow when ripe. The flesh is pale buttery yellow rather than the saffron of Alphonso or Kesar, completely fibre-free, with a small flat stone that gives it an unusually high flesh-to-stone ratio. Brix is high — often 18–24° — and the flavour is more directly sweet than fragrant, with a soft honey note rather than the floral perfume of southern cultivars.
Dasheri is the canonical chusne wala aam — the "mango for sucking" — eaten by gently rolling the fruit between the palms to soften the pulp, then biting a small hole at the stem end and squeezing the chilled liquid directly into the mouth. This is so much its defining preparation that across northern India "eating a Dasheri" implies the technique. In modern kitchens it goes into aamras, mango lassi, kulfi, and increasingly into Lucknow's nascent mango-based dessert restaurants. The season runs mid-June to mid-July, just after the southern Alphonso wave ends.