The fruit of love and fertility, the mango, is back.

Across the region mango lovers are celebrating, joyous their backyard trees are once again dripping with the fruit.

"We can't wait for them to ripen," said Kris Henderson who has two mango trees flushed with fruit at her Barkers Vale home.

"The children are looking longingly at the trees everyday," she said.

Northern Rivers commercial mango growers are also breathing a sigh of relief; after three bad mango seasons they finally have a crop to harvest.

The problem has been too much spring rain over the past three seasons, according to Jeremy Bright a Department of Primary Industries horticulturalist.

"You need good flowering and good pollination," Mr Bright said.

A hot dry spring is required for the fruit to set properly.

"This year's crop is looking good," he said.

Most of the NSW mango industry is based on the Hogarth Range, west of Casino, where the Kensington Pride variety of mango thrives.

The range, which receives about 60 per cent less rainfall than on the coast, produces 35,000 trays of mangos each season. The industry is valued at about $700,000.

While the NSW industry is only small compared to Queensland and the Northern Territory, it is significant because it crops late between February and April and provides late season fruit to the Australian market.

Mangoes belong to the genus Mangifera, consisting of numerous species of tropical fruiting trees in the flowering plant family Anacardiaceae. The mango is indigenous to India.[3] Cultivated in many tropical and subtropical regions and distributed widely in the world, mango is one of the most extensively exploited fruits for food, juice, flavor, fragrance and color.

Its leaves are ritually used as floral decorations at weddings and religious ceremonies, in India.

Mango trees reach 35-40 m in height, with a crown radius of 10 m. The tree is long-lived with some specimens known to be over 300 years old and still fruiting. In deep soil the taproot descends to a depth of 6 metres (20 feet), and the profuse, wide-spreading feeder roots also send down many anchor roots which penetrate for several feet. The leaves are evergreen, alternate, simple, 15-35 cm long and 6-16 cm broad; when the leaves are young they are orange-pink, rapidly changing to a dark glossy red, then dark green as they mature. The flowers are produced in terminal panicles 10-40 cm long; each flower is small and white with five petals 5-10 mm long, with a mild sweet odor suggestive of lily of the valley. The fruit takes from three to six months to ripen.

The ripe fruit is variable in size and color, and may be yellow, orange, red or green when ripe, depending on the cultivar.When ripe, the unpeeled fruit gives off a distinctive resinous sweet smell. In its center is a single flat oblong pit that can be fibrous or hairy on the surface, depending on the cultivar. Inside the pit 1-2 mm thick is a thin lining covering a single seed, 4-7 cm long, 3-4 cm wide, and 1 cm thick. The seed contains the plant embryo.