“This year, a peach from Furuyama Fruit Farm in central Fukushima Prefecture tested at an unprecedented 32 degrees Brix, the highest sugar content ever recorded for a peach. To put that number in perspective, your average ripe peach falls somewhere between 11°Bx and 14°Bx, and the Guinness World Record for peaches is 22°Bx. Next year, the farm plans to apply for a new Guinness record title, says Furuyama Kōji, the farm’s 40-year-old proprietor.”
“Preparations for the summer and fall harvest begin early in the year, not long after the end of the apple harvest. (Furuyama Fruit Farm grows apples as well as peaches.) The orchard’s 230 peach trees are carefully pruned between January and March. In April workers thin the buds to 1,500 per tree. In May they manually cross-pollinate these and then wait for the peaches to form and ripen. Harvesters check each peach by sight and touch, picking only the finest fruit. Each tree yields roughly 500 peaches annually, and it takes about 10 days to harvest each variety. While Furuyama believes in efficiency, he is also convinced that tender loving care is the key to delicious peaches.”
There is a contradiction in this sentence- he may waste no time in his pursuit of perfect fruit but the labor it takes to attain it puts the price tag on it too high to be a regular part of the diet of the average Japanese citizen.
Hey Fruitnut, how much for a gift basket of you highest quality fruit shipped to me by Fedex? Come on- everything is for sale. Would you do it for $20 per peach? Furuyama probably charges about $5- but he won’t ship to the U.S.
If it is the Fukushima Prefecture that was rocked by the earthquake a few years ago, I would be worried. The last news from there was that local honey from there contians a high level of radioactive.
The news, in Japanese, may not make it outside Japan. A good friend who has lived there for over 20 years let us know. Quite a few produces and products from there make those in the know nervous.
Most likely. Awfully close to where those reactors melted down. Is that the cause of the brix? Who knows. Are they “hot” fruit? very possibly. Does a little cesium 137 hurt? Still pretty cool. The Japanese know what they are doing when it comes to growing very expensive fruit.
Tell me what this means and I’ll tell you if I believe:
Furuyama Fruit Farm’s super-sweet Akatsuki Neo peaches are the product of a decade of assiduous soil-improvement efforts combined with the results of an experimental soil-improvement project commissioned three years ago by a farming company in Miyagi Prefecture.
I can say I don’t believe soil improvement is the reason for 50% higher brix. But I’ve been wrong before and there are many professional, highly talented fruit growers in Japan.
Not sure what my highest peach brix is but it’s higher than the Guinness record of 22.
I’ve had many nectarines above 32 brix. And as I’ve stated before above 32 brix usually leads to off flavors at least when the causative agent is a water deficit.
You can get many fruits to 32+ brix via dehydrating the fruit after harvest.
Maybe their idea of “soil improvement” is to make it drain well enough that they can grow them with water deficit?
Edit- maybe something like @Olpea does by growing on mounds?
I’m guessing that its a record that not too many people have tried for. I know I’ve come close, without making a particular effort. The highest I see in my records was 21, though I don’t even know what it was. It was labeled Harrow Delight, but given that it ripened in late August, it almost certainly isn’t correct.
That is pretty cool. I wonder how tall they made the greenhouse? I used to have an Indian co-worker whose family had a bunch of Mango trees when she lived in India. She said that they were very tall, so I doubt that full-sized ones would fit in the greenhouse. Maybe they are pruning them to tight spacing. But, 50 trees in 750 sq meters doesn’t seem all that high density. The article says that they started production in December 2014, so they are probably still young.
It it a bit fragile though- just one power outage & blizzard (preventing someone from getting there to turn on backup heat, generator, etc) at the wrong time and all the trees die…
I doubt that would give too much of a boost to brix, but maybe it helps a bit. I mainly plant on the mounds because the roots sit in water during the heavy spring rains, Our soil holds a lot of water because of high organic matter. The terraces prevent the trees from going backwards vs. trees planted on flat ground, because water can’t pool at the root zone
I’m pretty skeptical that some soil amendments are responsible (to any significance) for the world record 32 brix reported in the article (I didn’t know there was a world record category for peach brix.) Supposedly some foliar fertilizers can raise brix some (because the roots have limits on nutrient uptake) but I’d be surprised if any soil amendments would do that (unless the soil was deficient in the first place).
Soil science is pretty well established. It would be remarkable that something as simple as adding amendments to increase brix would have gone unnoticed for so long. I think rather attributing the brix to soil amendments is more of a commercial for Miyagi Prefecture.
Imo, brix in peaches is most affected by cultivar, amount of water during the growing season, soil type (i.e. sand soil which doesn’t hold much water vs. heavy clay/organic soil) and (to a lesser degree) rootstock.
I think water deprivation is the biggest factor. Although I don’t measure brix, I’m sure I’ve never approached any of Fruitnut’s brix numbers except perhaps in 2012 when it didn’t rain all summer.
Did you mean you mean Harrow Diamond, or Harrow Dawn peach? Harrow Delight is a pear.
Wow, not very high, I have hit 20 myself! I have no way to compete with others though. Steve can control the environment better. I may get high brix in the mid to upper 20’s once a decade at best.[quote=“fruitnut, post:8, topic:8285”]
You can get many fruits to 32+ brix via dehydrating the fruit after harvest.
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I doubt I’ve ever harvested a single peach over 15 on any tree in any orchard I’ve managed in the last 25 years. I’ve had a few crazy sweet nectarines from a single Honey Royale nect that had a light crop on a dry year (28 brix) and nectarines can hover around 15, but when I give a customer a peach with anything over 13 brix they tend to think it the best peach they’ve ever eaten.
Of course, growing fruit in the ground is different than in containers. Even the containers I use for my nursery trees have some root in the ground and the fruit they produce is similar to in ground trees, although smaller and maybe a little sweeter.
That is my low end here, why we produce more peaches than 45 other states. I suppose it’s possible the brix meter was off, most were 17, a few 20 or more. I myself view 20 as a failure on my part, I know I can do better than that. I’m learning a lot, so if weather permits, i can do it. This year we had 7-9 inches during the growing season, that amount is not much when it’s 90 everyday. I still got a low brix this year, last year was when I hit 20.I found out my boarder whom i asked to water my plants when i was gone every weekend, watered the trees too, I never told him to. Too bad I discovered the mistake in October!
If you said that about a nectarine, then ya I’d say maybe in an instance like Alan and his Honey Royale. But on a normal sized peach I’m with Alan again, upper 20s seems out of reach.
I would agree upper 20’s is out of reach, but not 20. Most peaches here are harvested when they hit 14. I hit 10 to 13 this year. A very bad year for me. Indian Free is so acid, it needs a 15 just to be edible.
Some of my Indian Free seeds sprouted, most were crossed with nectarines. I expect a high brix from them.
Last year people came back for more, everybody said they were the best peaches they ever had. The nectarines were even sweeter, but last year at harvest I didn’t have a meter. This year they were low from 10 to 15. Still people loved Arctic Glo.
Last year a few Indian Free hit 20, It was unusual, and I didn’t report it, but did state they were between 15-17. I didn’t want to brag.
If I can get an average of 15 to 17 in October, it would be easy to get 20 in August. I’ll let all know what Lucky 13 hits next year, ripens in early August.
I haven’t grown anywhere near as many peaches as you have, but I’ve gotten close to 20 on at least one in-ground tree, Carolina Gold. From memory, I thought that 19 was my high for it. But, when I searched, I found a note about one with 22.5 brix, after it sat in the fridge for 2 weeks (9/17/2014). I’m not sure if that counts though, as it may have lost a little moisture, which bumped the brix a bit.
I also found a couple records of high-brix Pallas (21.2 and 22.5), but that was from before I planted it in-ground, where it then died… That reminds me that I should try to get some wood for it again.
You are completely correct- it was labeled Harrow Diamond. I think I’ve gotten something labeled Harrow Delight near 20 too, but it may also be mislabeled, as it is consistently astringent. Wow- I have bad luck getting Harrows…At least Harrow Sweet seems right.
Peach quality monitoring In 2002 and 2003, peach firmness, brix, and % red skin measurements were collected throughout the primary peach season at a major packing house in SW Michigan. In 2004, Bill Shane conducted a survey funded by a local packing shed to compare quality characteristics of Michigan and competing states peaches in SW region chain stores. This study showed that Michigan peaches had a slight advantage in sweetness but less consistent (uniform) firmness and red skin color compared to California peaches https://msu.edu/~shane/activities/EISCurrent.htm
Indian Free is not a typical peach, very small fruit and highly flavored with an extremely long season to develop sugar. I wouldn’t use that one as a yard stick. I have not measured the brix of one of them from my tree yet, but now you’ve inspired me to check it out next time I manage to harvest some.
I doubt peaches are big there because they get exceptionally high brix. Colorado peaches and any peaches grown further west have the potential of being sweeter than peaches grown where there is summer rain. Higher sun intensity further south may help also- I don’t know.
Yes. I would agree with that. Yet it is still a peach and could be used for peach world records all the same. Although I have zero interest in reporting anything officially. And agree, I can’t compete against a greenhouse anyway. Give me a few years to monitor others. I think here 14 would be a good number. But I still say I can hit 20 every 10 years or so. I admit pure speculation on my part. I could be dead wrong. I wish I had more trees! Well i do now, so cool to look at the seeds sprouting. I’m going to go plant them in small pots, and put under T-5 lights. My T-5 4 foot 4 bulb is a “very high output” (VHO, not HO) and good enough for hemp plants, the trees will get a jump on next season. I do suspect any hybrids that are good, will produce fairly high brix fruits. Some of the crosses maybe very unusual, i used every fruit in my yard, cherries, plums, pluots Nadia, etc. Most are probably crossed with the closest tree, Arctic Glo. I hand pollinated all flowers on Indian Free.
Hmm- sounds a bit like Carolina Gold as well, though IF is probably more extreme on all counts.
None of the peaches I harvest earlier in the summer were that high. For example, I think TangO (early August) maxed out around 16 and PF1 (early July) around 12.
I’m doing the same with a few of the So jujube seedlings. I’m comparing how much they grow, compared to those in South facing windows.