although there are wide range of such fruits, but here i am including only those which are imported in india in large quantity.
1. KIWI
Kiwifruit is native to north-central and eastern China. The first recorded description of the kiwifruit dates to 12th century China during the Song dynasty. As it was usually collected from the wild and consumed for medicinal purposes, the plant was rarely cultivated or bred. Cultivation of kiwifruit spread from China in the early 20th century to New Zealand, where the first commercial plantings occurred. The fruit became popular with British and American servicemen stationed in New Zealand during World War II, and was later exported, first to Great Britain and then to California in the 1960s.
In New Zealand during the 1940s and 1950s, the fruit became an agricultural commodity through the development of commercially viable cultivars, agricultural practices, shipping, storage, and marketing. Much of the breeding to refine the green kiwifruit and develop the gold Zespri was done by the Plant & Food Research Institute (formerly HortResearch) during the decades of 1970-1999. In 1990, the New Zealand Kiwifruit Marketing Board opened an office for Europe in Antwerp, Belgium, which became the headquarters for European marketing of Zespri gold kiwifruit in 2010. The general name, "Zespri", has been used for marketing of all green and gold cultivars of kiwifruit from New Zealand since 2012.
2. DRAGON FRUIT
A pitaya or pitahaya is the fruit of several different cactus species indigenous to the Americas.Pitaya usually refers to fruit of the genus Stenocereus, while pitahaya or dragon fruit refers to fruit of the genus Hylocereus, both in the Cactaceae family. The dragon fruit is cultivated in Southeast Asia, Florida, the Caribbean, Australia, and throughout tropical and subtropical world regions. Pitahaya-producing cacti of the genus Hylocereus, originally native to a region including Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and northern South America. The dragon fruit is cultivated in Southeast Asia, Florida, the Caribbean, Australia, and throughout tropical and subtropical world regions.
3. LONGAN
Dimocarpus longan, commonly known as the longan, is a tropical tree species that produces edible fruit. The longan is believed to originate from the mountain range between Myanmar and southern China. Other reported origins include India, Sri Lanka, upper Myanmar, north Thailand, Kampuchea (more commonly known as Cambodia), north Vietnam and New Guinea.
Its earliest record of existence draws back to the Han Dynasty in 200 BC. The emperor had demanded lychee and longan trees to be planted in his palace gardens in Shaanxi, but the plants failed. Four hundred years later, longan trees flourished in other parts of China like Fujian and Guangdong, where longan production soon became an industry.
Later on, due to immigration and the growing demand for nostalgic foods, the longan tree was officially introduced to Australia in the mid-1800s, Thailand in the late-1800s, and Hawaii and Florida in the 1900s. The warm, sandy-soiled conditions allowed for the easy growth of longan trees. This jump-started the longan industry in these locations
Despite its long success in China, the longan is considered to be a relatively new fruit to the world. It has only been acknowledged outside of China recently in the last 250 years. The first European acknowledgement of the fruit was recorded by Joao de Loureiro, a Jesuit botanist, in 1790. The first entry resides in his collection of works, Flora Cochinchinensis.
Currently, longan crops are grown in southern China, Taiwan, northern Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, India, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Australia, the United States, and Mauritius. It is also grown in Bangladesh.
4. MANGOSTEEN
Mangosteen (Garcinia mangostana), also known as the purple mangosteen,[1] is a tropical evergreen tree believed to have originated in the Sunda Islands of the Malay archipelago and the Moluccas of Indonesia.
Mangosteen is a native plant to Southeast Asia. Highly valued for its juicy, delicate texture and slightly sweet and sour flavour, the mangosteen has been cultivated in Malaysia, Borneo, Sumatra, Mainland Southeast Asia, and the Philippines since ancient times. The 15th-century Chinese record Yingya Shenglan described mangosteen as mang-chi-shih (derived from Malay Language manggis), a native plant of Southeast Asia of white flesh with delectable sweet and sour taste.
A description of mangosteen was included in the Species Plantarum by Linnaeus in 1753. The mangosteen was introduced into English greenhouses in 1855. Subsequently its culture was introduced into the Western Hemisphere, where it became established in West Indies islands, especially Jamaica. It was later established on the Americas mainland in Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, and Ecuador. The mangosteen tree generally does not grow well outside the tropics.
There is a legend about Queen Victoria offering a reward of 100 pounds sterling to anyone who could deliver to her the fresh fruit. Although this legend can be traced to a 1930 publication by the fruit explorer, David Fairchild, it is not substantiated by any known historical document, yet is probably responsible for the uncommon designation of mangosteen as the "Queen of Fruit".
The journalist and gourmet R. W. Apple, Jr. once said of the fruit, "No other fruit, for me, is so thrillingly, intoxicatingly luscious...I'd rather eat one than a hot fudge sundae, which for a big Ohio boy is saying a lot." Since 2006, private small-volume orders for fruits grown in Puerto Rico were sold to American specialty food stores and gourmet restaurants who serve the flesh segments as a delicacy dessert.
5. POMELO
The pomelo, Citrus maxima or Citrus grandis, is the largest citrus fruit from the Rutaceae family. It is a natural (non-hybrid) citrus fruit, similar in appearance to a large grapefruit, native to South and Southeast Asia. After a Captain Shaddock of an East India Company ship introduced it to Barbados, the fruit was called "shaddock" in English. From there the name spread to Jamaica in 1696. It remains a common name for the fruit among English authors.
The etymology of the word "pomelo" is uncertain. It may be an alteration of "pompelmoes": in Tamil pomelos are called pampa limāsu, which means "big citrus". The name was adopted by the Portuguese as pomposos limões and then by the Dutch as pompelmoes. With some deviations, the name may be found in many European languages, such as German (pampelmuse), Latvian (pampelmūze), Ido (pompelmuso), whereas some other languages use "pomelo" (Turkish, Norwegian, Polish, Bulgarian). In English, the word "pomelo" (also spelled pomello, pummelo, pommelo, pumelo) has become the more common name, although "pomelo" has historically been used for grapefruit. (The 1973 printing of the American Heritage Dictionary, for example, gives grapefruit as the only meaning of "pomelo.")
It has been suggested, but not attested, that "pomelo" is an alteration of a compound of English words pome ("apple") + melon. The fruit is also known as jabong in Hawaii and jambola in varieties of English spoken in South Asia.
6. RAMBUTAN
Native to Indonesia, rambutan is commonly grown in various countries throughout the region. It has spread from there to parts of Asia, Africa, Oceania, and Central America. The widest variety of cultivars, wild and cultivated, are found in Indonesia and Malaysia.
Around the 13th to 15th centuries, Arab traders, who played a major role in Indian Ocean trade, introduced rambutan into Zanzibar and Pemba of East Africa. There are limited rambutan plantings in some parts of India. In the 19th century, the Dutch introduced rambutan from their colony in Southeast Asia to Suriname in South America. Subsequently, the plant spread to tropical Americas, planted in the coastal lowlands of Colombia, Ecuador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Trinidad, and Cuba. In 1912, rambutan was introduced to the Philippines from Indonesia. Further introductions were made in 1920 (from Indonesia) and 1930 (from Malaya), but until the 1950s its distribution was limited.
There was an attempt to introduce rambutan to the southeastern United States, with seeds imported from Java in 1906, but the species proved to be unsuccessful, except in Puerto Rico.
7. TANGERINE
The tangerine (Citrus tangerina) is a group of orange-colored citrus fruit consisting of hybrids of mandarin orange (Citrus reticulata). Tangerines are smaller and less rounded than common oranges. The taste is considered less sour, as well as sweeter and stronger, than that of an orange. A ripe tangerine is firm to slightly soft, heavy for its size,] and pebbly-skinned with no deep grooves, as well as orange in color. The peel is very thin, with very little bitter white mesocarp, which makes them usually easier to peel and to split into segments.] All of these traits are shared by mandarins.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word "tangerine" was originally an adjective meaning "Of or pertaining to, or native of Tangier, a seaport in Morocco, on the Strait of Gibraltar" and "a native of Tangier." The OED cites this usage from Addison's The Tatler in 1710 with similar uses from the 1800s. The adjective was applied to the fruit, once known scientifically as "Citrus nobilis var. tangeriana" which grew in the region of Tangiers. This usage appears in the 1800s In India it is called Narangi in Hindi (Hindi:नारंगी), Narangi means "Orange color" and hence it refers to the bright orange color of the fruit.
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