The longan was first described in 1790 by the Jesuit mission-ary and botanist Joao de Loureiro (Loureiro, 1790) although it hasa documented history of more than 2200 years in China (Huanget al., 2005), based in its excellent nutritive and pharmaceuti-cal potential (Wong, 2000). The genus Dimocarpus contains sixspecies of trees and shrubs and D. longan has two subspeciesand five varieties distinguished mainly by the leaflet structure(Subhadrabandhu and Stern, 2005): D. longan ssp. longan var.longan (the most important for fruit consumption) originally dis-tributed from Myanmar to southern China, south-west India andSri Lanka; D. longan ssp. longan var. longepetiolulatus originally dis-tributed in southern Vietnam; D. longan ssp. longan var. obtusus