North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[<dwoodard@becon.org>]

By Chip Brantley; Bloomsbury USA, 2009.

Brantley discusses the California stone fruit industry (especially 
Japanese plums), the careers
and contributions of Luther Burbank and Floyd Zaiger and others, and 
recent developments in Japanese plum hybrids.

He emphasizes the quest for quality as a route to competitive 
advantage.

A few things that stand out are the move to controlled cultivars, not 
only as a means to limit production and boost prices, but also for 
quality control (and control of prices). The importance of brands means 
large scale organization. Since cooperation is not a route being taken 
this means large corporations in growing and marketing.

It seems that new hybrid plum cultivars from Israel and elsewhere have 
Brix ratings up to 29. I guess it will take a while before these filter 
down to the home grower.

However, tasting what I'm able to buy from the local carriage-trade 
supermarket, I still haven't encountered anything matching the 
California grown Queen Anns I was able to buy when I lived in Ottawa in 
the 1970s from a certain produce store in the Byward Market which I 
suspect catered to the embassy trade - or the Burbanks which I ate off 
trees in the hot Niagara summer of 1988. If you really like good fruit, 
there is still good reason to grow your own, and I suspect there always 
will be.

Doug Woodard
St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada