Interesting interview article, check this excerpt: “ What are the company’s main challenges in variety renewal for stone fruit?
Without any doubt it is a variety renewal linked to taste. The varieties must be sweet, with little acidity to compete with other types of fruit that we can find all year round on the supermarket shelves”.
I contrast that to a statement I heard from one of the Zaiger family members in a YouTube video where she said something along: “I wish to say we are breeding for flavor, but American customer go after appearance”. Not the exact words, but rephrased from my memory. Personally I think this is a shame, the average American customer goes after appearance because they have no hope in sweetness or flavor in supermarket fruit, so the only criteria left is appearance. I think breeders and growers are equally complicit in this situation, probably in addition to market dynamics.
Supermarket fruit has to follow different criteria. Above all is transportability and shelf-life. Those often contradict flavour: soft-texture might be pleasing but leads to lower shelf-life, also I think more sugar will make the fruit spoil faster. To improve shelf-life fruit must often be picked unripe, hence no aroma.
Only those poor people without access to ground to plant their own fruit trees should buy them from the supermarket. If breeders are smart, they double dip and breed different varieties for commercial growers and hobby growers.
I agree with the sentiment that often times the best varieties for commercial success are different than the ideal variety for the home grower. However, in general, there isn’t a whole lot of breeding for the home grown fruit market by professional breeders, because it tends be a very small market, and breeding for it will vary by region and usually isn’t profitable. Especially when you consider the lions share of the market for home growers is fruit trees of any variety sold to a generally undiscerning public. For that quite literally any variety will do because most people don’t know what they don’t know, so why breed something special when the public will pay the same for something that already exists? That’s why amateur breeders are important. They can potentially fill a niche that professional breeding programs usually won’t.
Do you think this major European breeder is unaware of these facts? They are, but on top of those qualities that are needed for long shelf life they consider flavor and taste is the number 1 criteria.
The contradiction is not a must, it is just that flavor and sweetness seem close to the bottom of the criteria for American breeders, while they are at the top of the criteria with this European breeder.
Transport distances from farm to market are often shorter for European growers. A lot of peaches are grown for export in Murcia, Spain. From there to Berlin is about 1,200 miles. The distance from a major stone fruit growing region like Fresno to New York is more than double that. This gives European growers a lot more leeway in terms of shelf-life.
Having just come back from Spain, the main commercial varieties of peaches, plums and apricots in season now that I got to try were no better than the major varieties here in California. Things were a little riper than you’d get at a supermarket here though. More like buying the same variety at the farmer’s market.
I live in CT, an hour north of NYC. I often times get excellent (brix and flavor) honey series nectarines and pluots from my Costco, but it is the exception, like 10% of the time. Those nectarines are usually firm ripe, requiring several days on the counter to soften. These are bred by Zaiger and grown in Fresno, so the longer distance you are talking about is not the real hurdle. It is the lack of focus from the breeders, and lack of good cultural practices, that favor high quality, from the growers.