Matchmaker, Matchmaker
The Zaigers of California have made marrying fwils
their business. And when plum meets apricot or tart peach meets sweet,
the result can be a marriage made in heaven
By David Karp
HERE IN California's San Joaquin Valley, for six weeks
starting in mid-February, pink and white blossoms adorn the leafless limbs
of
millions of trees, a floral prelude to the peaches, nectarines, and plums
that will stock America's supermarkets from May through September. And
here, off a country road just west of Modesto, lies the experimental orchard
of Zaiger's Genetics. It looks like countless other farms, a cluster of
buildings surrounded by rows of trees. Nothing indicates that a revolution
in the taste and texture of the fruit America eats started on this land.
Nothing indicates you're about to meet--as Zaiger's Genetics' stationery
reads--the "Family Organized to Improve Fruit Worldwide."
I am, as even the slightest acquaintance will tell you, obsessed with the study of fruit. And so I have visited the Zaigers five times in as many years. I know that Floyd and Betty Zaiger will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary this year, and that their daughter, Leith Gardner, and sons Gary and Grant live nearby and actively participate in the family business. Floyd Zaiger, 74, is in my opinion our greatest modem fruit breeder. I admire his creativity and persistence. Most breeders consider themselves lucky to develop one or two successful varieties in a lifetime, but over the past two decades Zaiger has introduced three sweeping innovations: Pluots (plum-apricot crosses that most resemble plums); white-fleshed peaches and nectarines that are firm enough to ship; and new mild-flavored, low-acid yellow-fleshed peaches and nectarines. He has, in fact, expanded the possibilities of fruit.
But Zaiger has also worked hand in hand with industrial-scale growers and shippers, many of whom have turned this country's peaches and nectarines into a flavorless commodity: big, hard, red rocks. And though many of the varieties Zaiger introduced have wonderful flavor, many others are merely pretematurally sweet and so firm they crunch when you bite into one. Since when does a ripe peach go crunch?
On this chilly February morning, as I park my pickup and enter the family's modest office, I wonder, Is Floyd Zaiger genius or accomplice?
Lone Tree. Pluots, plumcots, and Apriums, including many experimental selections, sold by
mail. Three-pound box, $30-$35; six-pound box, $40- $45; includes overnight delivery;
(888) 882-7742; www.edengarden.com. > Harvest Pride. Growers and driers of heirloom stem
fruity including exquisite dried Stanwick white nectarines, sold by mail at $14 a pound (sbipM
included); Box 123, Reedley, CA 93654 >Mariani Orchards. Growers of hundreds ofvanctis,
of stone fruit, new, old, and rare (peaches, nectarines, apricots, plums, Pluots, and cherries).
Available only at the orchard store; 1615 Half Road, Morgan Hill, CA 95037; (408) 779-5467.
ZAIGER, A PLAINSPOKEN, modest man who wears checked shirts, drives a ten-year-old car, and hunts with a bow for recreation, is still amazed that people come from all over the world to call on him. He was born in Nebraska, grew up poor in Iowa, and, at age 12, after he moved west with his family in 1938, lived in a migrant labor camp and picked strawberries. After graduating from UC Davis, he found work as a high- school teacher in Modesto, 75 miles southeast of San Francisco, and started breeding azaleas and rhododendrons.
Then, in 1956, Fred Anderson, a re- nowned fruit breeder who once worked for the legendary Luther Burbank, took him on as an apprentice. Zaiger quickly struck out on his own. He ran an omamen- tal nursery during the day to make money and at home pursued his dreams, planting experimental seedlings by moonlight.
"I'd caught the dreaded disease of fruit breeding," he recalls.
Among Zaiger's dreams was the desire to finish work started by Luther Burbank, one of his heroes. A century ago, Burbank, the greatest fruit breeder of his era, man- aged to hybridize plumcots (half plum, half apricot). But most were small and sour. They never fulfilled Burbank's prom- ise of a "new order of fruit." But Zaiger's Pluots did. His trans-species crosses are Zaiger's Genetics' most celebrated cre- ations. Somehow, he succeeded where the master had failed. How did he do it?
Sitting in his office, Zaiger flips through one of the data-filled notebooks docu- menting some of the million or so crosses he's made. "Breeding fruit is a game of numbers to break the links between desir- able and undesirable characteristics," he says. "The wider the cross, the greater the variability. You need to grow enough crosses so that the genes express them- selves to the limit. And you need to be both extremely patient and ambitious."
In developing the Pluot, Zaiger origi- nally crossbred stone-fruit species, such as peaches and plums, to create new root- stocks for grafting trees, ignoring the fruits themselves. Almost all the hybrids were sterile, like mules, but Zaiger noticed that a few plum-apricot crosses bore fruit. He started saving the large, attractive, and flavorful ones, and used their genes as building blocks.
Zaiger selected the best hybrid seed- lings over several generations of trees, then evaluated the results in test plantings be- fore releasing the first commercial varieties in 1989. He trademarked them as Pluots. Compared to regular plums, which often are bland, or sour under the skin, Pluots frequently have a sweeter, richer flavor. Some varieties are a typical plum color, but others have red, green, yellow, or mot- tled skin and flesh; when ripe, the best, such as Flavor Supreme, Flavor King, and Dapple Dandy, are truly luscious.
Today, California grows some 3,000 acres of Pluots, less than 10 percent of the state's plum plantings. But this portion will likely swell to 25 or even 50 percent within a decade. Once viewed as specialty items, Pluots increasingly are available at supermarkets. One major grower sells Pluots as "Dinosaur Eggs," much to Zaiger's annoyance, since, he maintains, he thought of the name first.
"You have to look at a fruit and see the potential 10 to 15 years down the road," Zaiger says. "It's like a chess game, where you need to think several moves in ad- vance. When you finally come up with a successful variety, it's like hitting the jackpot, but much more so, because it's something you put heart and energy into."
Lunchtime approaches, and Zaiger heads to the house,
where the family gath- ers in the kitchen each day at noon. Over plates
of Betty's salmon, potatoes, and salad, they talk, like farmers everywhere,
of the weather, and aboutwork. Leith opens the refrigerator and I notice
it's filled with vials each carefully numbered. In there, next to the
mustard, lie the genes for the hot new peach and nectarine varieties of
2010. The conversation now turns to some of the wilder experimental crosses
still in the Zaiger pipeline: white apricots, Nectaplums, Peacotums....
This is the family business.
Betty keeps track of the finances, while Gary and Grant
supervise the farming of the 125-acre orchard and do preliminary evaluations
of new crosses. But it's Leith, the most ambitious and organized, who
holds the title of general manager. "The boys are daredevils, excellent
skiers and swimmers, but they don't like to
make judgment calls," says Floyd. "Leith always had a special
touch. She could walk up to an unruly horse that had given the boys fits
and settle it down."
It's raining hard outside, but after doing the dishes
Leith dons a long rubber coat and drives a golf cart out to the orchard
to gather buds for pollen. February and March, when the actual crosses
are made, are two of the family's busiest months. She consults a list,
then heads to a genetically valuable Pluot tree, identified by a number
and its position in the rows. She twists off about 100 pink buds, choosing
those that are at the "popcorn" stage, just before they open,
and puts them in a paper bag.
"There's a three- to five-day window of opportunity
for each tree," she says as she records her actions in a notebook,
crouching to shield it from the raindrops. Once the flowers open, random
pollination would skew the results of matchmaking.
When she has collected buds from a dozen trees, Leith
heads into a trailer, the family's new laboratory, and spreads them out
on racks under lights to dry.
Once they've done so, Leith brings them to a group
of workers gathered around a table in a large greenhouse. They snip the
flowers into tiny pieces, then mash them in a strainer over glass bowls
to extract the pollen.
Some 2,000 young trees are growing in blue plastic
tubs near the greenhouse. The Zaigers' program of mating varieties that
would not naturally bloom together requires detailed choreography, as
workers rotate some trees into the greenhouse for pollination and others
into a cooler to delay flowering.
IN THE GREENHOUSE, Floyd Zaiger watches workwomen pluck
the stamens (the male flower parts) from the trees to prevent self-pollination;
the thin,
spiky pistils (the female parts) look a bit surreal on their own. To demonstrate
the final step in the marriage of genes, Zaiger twirls an eyebrow brush
in a vial of peach pollen and daubs a smidgen onto the pistils of a nectarine
bride.
When such a union bears fruit, the seed is saved and
planted; with some unstable crosses, the embryo within is too immature
to grow by itself and must be nourished in a test tube and then transplanted
to a growing medium. This standard breeding technique, embryo rescue,
represents the limit of the Zaigers' use of artificial methods. None of
their hybrids result from genetic engineering. "Our hands are full
already," says Zaiger.
After planting the seeds, the Zaigers wait several
years for these seedlings to bear fruit, and then repropagate the most
promising ones in a full-scale orchard
for evaluation. Those that don't make the cut, get cut; many rows consist
mainly of stumps.
"Fruit breeding is a combination of science and
art," Leith says. "My dad eats, breathes, and dreams fruit varieties.
Me too, sometimes."
Not everyone is thrilled with all of the brave new
fruit introduced by the Family Organized to Improve Fruit Worldwide. "Fifteen
years ago Floyd Zaiger said to me, 'This is going to revolutionize the
fruit industry: I can make sweet fruit hard as a rock,'" says Andy
Mariani, a California grower and fruit collector who participates in trials
of new Zaiger varieties. "I thought to myself, 'Who wants to eat
balsa wood impregnated with sugar?'"
Mariani, who goes out of his way to praise many of
Zaiger's Pluots and calls Zaiger's Honey Kist nectarine superb ("It
has real nectarine flavor"), prefers older
stone-fruit varieties. Take, for instance, the fuzzy Pallas peach with
a distinctive beak at the bottom. Developed in 1878, it has tender white
flesh--so juicy it dribbles all over when you take a bite--and a rich,
sweet, honey-almond flavor. "It's as good as a peach gets,"
he says.
Yet Mariani also recognizes the drawbacks of some of
the varieties he loves. Of that Pallas peach, he admits, "It's pale,
it cracks easily, and it falls before it's ripe. The only thing it has
going for it is flavor. But you can't sell flavor alone."
And that is the problem facing someone like Floyd Zaiger.
In order to become, as one grower has called Zaiger, "the most successful
fruit breeder of the past 15 years," he had to work with the forces
of the marketplace. That meant delivering (in the case of peaches and
nectarines) fruit that is very large, very red, and very sweet.
Ed Laivo at Dave Wilson Nursery, which licenses Zaiger
varieties, observes a generational divide at the nursery's fruit tastings:
"Visitors over 35 years old prefer fruit that's soft and juicy so
that it runs down your chin," he says. "With visitors under
35, odds are that they'll come to their first tasting trained to expect
firm fruit."
Both a cause and a result of these expectations is
the emergence of low-acid varieties. They can withstand the American distribution
system's rough handling yet deliver acceptable flavor. Old-fashioned fruit
tastes tart when firm because its acidity is high; when it's fully ripe,
acidity drops, and sweet and tart come into balance. With the new varieties,
however, acidity starts low and remains low, so they can be picked hard
and crunchy and still taste sweet, right off the shelf.
ZAIGER'S WORK ON low-acid varieties began by chance
in 1968 when, on a visit to Europe, he noticed that white-fleshed peach
and nectarine varieties fetched a premium over yellow ones. Fruit sellers
and shippers there took great pains with the exquisite but delicate fruit.
American farmers at the time had largely stopped growing white varieties
because the fruits were so easily bruised that they couldn't be shipped
long distances. If picked green enough to ship, the fruits would taste
tart. Only the Babcock peach and its offspring, which did taste sweet
when picked firm because of its low acidity, had any kind of presence
in the United States. But it had an unpleasant tinge of bitterness when
immature.
Upon his return, Zaiger started breeding for the European
market, which preferred white varieties with a balance of acidity and
sugar. He earned awards from
the French government, including one for his efforts in developing white
peaches with classic flavor. Eventually, by crossing tender low-acid white
peaches with tougher yellow types, he created low-acid fruit for American
growers--mild white peaches that were sweet, but not bitter, when firm
enough to ship. Zaiger's first major selection, White Lady, appeared in
1986; since then, new-style white varieties, some from rival breeders,
have rocketed to reach an estimated 18 percent of California's crop this
year.
Zaiger enjoyed similar success with nectarines, which
are really fuzzless peaches (not, as some suppose, peach-plum hybrids).
Originally much less common than peaches, nectarines tended to be small,
with greenish-white flesh and a distinctive rich, winy flavor and aroma.
It was Fred Anderson who started the trend
toward modem, yellow nectarines--firm, large, and red-skinned. Just as
the fragile white nectarine neared commercial extinction in California
(which produces 90 percent of the nation's nectarine crop), Zaiger single-handedly
transformed and revived it with Arctic Rose, a stunningly sweet, moderately
low-acid variety, in 1989.
Until recently, most of Zaiger's white-fleshed fruits
were exported to East Asia, particularly Taiwan, where low-acid peaches
were familiar and prized as symbols of longevity and good fortune. Nectarines
required a bit of repositioning (California exporters changed the Chinese
name from "oily peach" to "rosy peach"), but they,
too, took the Asian market by storm. California growers rushed to plant
the profitable new varieties; only since 1997, however, as production
burgeoned and the Asian financial crisis limited exports, has the great
wave of white fruit hit American consumers.
Building on his work with white varieties, Zaiger next
introduced low-acid yellow-fleshed peaches and nectarines. The first small
crops, of Sweet Scarlet peaches and Honey Kist nectarines, were harvested
in 1995, but only now are the new fruits starting to reach grocery stores
in volume. Nurserymen estimate that more than a quarter of the yellow
fruit now being planted in California is low-acid.
This raises a problem of identity: The mildness of
low-acid yellow-fleshed varieties makes them markedly different from traditional
fruit, but they look the same. A buyer expecting conventional peaches
for cooking, for which the tang of acidity is crucial, might be dismayed
to discover he's purchased blander fruit.
To differentiate the mild yellow varieties, Zaiger
encourages growers to print "Zee Sweet--low-acid" on their supermarket
stickers. But such designations rile
those growers who aren't ready to jump on the low-acid bandwagon.
Mariani's verdict on low-acid fruit is mixed: "When
harvested ripe, traditional acid varieties are more interesting, richer
in flavor," he says. "But when fruit is
picked firm for shipping, low-acid varieties are better. They're adapted
to the marketing system that's in place."
The changes wrought by fruit breeders began long before
Zaiger's work, and in the end I can't fault him for adapting varieties
to the American market. Fruit is
grown thousands of miles from consumers, and shelf life and appearance
are paramount. But I expect more--fragrant, juicy, great-tasting fruits--because
I know how good Zaiger's best can be. Zaiger himself is well aware of
the compromises that commerce has entailed.
"We have the genes now to put aroma back into
peaches and nectarines," he says as I get ready to head home. "A
lot of sacrifices were made in getting fruit firm enough to be sent around
the world. We wanted bigger, redder, and firmer. Now I'm searching for
flavor, flavor, flavor."
The words echo in my ears as I drive away. Floyd Zaiger's greatest achievements may be yet to come.