Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
But red has a hold that is almost subconscious. There's a story told by those in the stone
fruit industry about a marketing experiment. A tasting panel was given two nectarines:
one a fairly tasteless red variety, the other a great-tasting gold. Sitting around, tasting and
talking about the fruit, the consumers unanimously agreed that the gold was a much better
nectarine and that was the one they would buy. Then, on the way out the door, the panel-
ists were offered boxes of nectarines as a thank you. One held the preferred golden fruit,
the other the red. To a person, the consumers picked the red fruit to take home. Red sells.
That's not all. Although it seems impossible to most true peach and nectarine lovers,
consumers in general show a preference for fruit that is firm and nearly crisp, as opposed
to melting. Breeders are working on that, too.
Probably the biggest change in the stone fruit world in the past decade, though, has
been the color of the flesh of the fruit. Whitefleshed peaches and nectarines, practically
nonexistent commercially ten or fifteen years ago, now make up a substantial part of the
harvest. In one three-year period in the mid-1990s, plantings of white-fleshed varieties
increased by more than 350 percent. This was particularly notable for nectarines - more
than a third of all the trees that were planted during that period were white-fleshed. White-
fleshed fruit went from being so little known that it was all but ignored in the official stat-
istics to so popular that it required its own category. In 1992 white-fleshed fruit accounted
for less than 2 percent of the total harvest. By 2002 it accounted for roughly 20 percent of
all peaches and nectarines.
What's ironic is that until the 1950s, most of the nectarines that were grown in Califor-
nia were white-fleshed. Nectarines were a very minor crop at that point, and consumers
were more willing to buy a fruit that had the familiar golden color of a peach. Perhaps
more important, those older varieties were soft in texture and, because of their white flesh,
showed bruises almost immediately. "You could ship them about as far as an ice-cream
cone," one old fruit grower remembered.
To take advantage of these stone fruit trends, California growers have recently begun
marketing fruit labeled "Summerwhite." The varieties included in this category combine
the desirable characteristics of high-colored skin, white flesh and firm texture, and they
make up more than 15 percent of the annual harvest.
Although white-fleshed fruit is popular domestically, the main demand for it comes
from Asia. At one time as much as 80 percent of the white nectarines harvested in Cali-
fornia went overseas, primarily to Taiwan. Furthermore, Asian customers love fruit that
tastes extremely sweet. As a result, most of the white-fleshed peaches and nectarines that
