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The Eden Pride plumcot shocks the eyes, the nose and
the palate. From across the room, its flaming orange, slightly downy skin
and alluring perfume evoke a gigantic dream apricot. Bite into the translucent,
plumlike golden flesh, and it gushes syrupy juice, but without a plum's
sour edge. Experts swore this experimental variety rarely bore
fruit. So how did Steven Brenkwitz manage to grow it? The eyes of this
genial Tracy farmer narrow. "If I told you," he says, "I'd have
to kill you." Maybe he's kidding, but the brave new world of plum-apricot
hybrids is serious business. After 40 years of patient work, a Modesto fruit breeder
named Floyd Zaiger has revolutionized the plum industry with his family
of patented Pluots--smooth-skinned crosses in which plum genes and character
prevail. His Apriums (mostly apricot) and plumcots (half plum, half apricot)
lag a decade behind, but also offer the promise of distinctive, delicious
new fruits. A century ago, Luther Burbank, the greatest fruit breeder
of his day, developed most of the plum varieties that have come to predominate
in California. As part of his wide-ranging experiments, Burbank also hybridized
some plumcots. Although these novelties astounded botanists, most were
small, sour or unproductive, and the plumcot never fulfilled Burbank's
promise of a "new order of fruit." They exist today only in
private orchards. Early in Zaiger's career, he worked for one of Burbank's
students, Fred Anderson, the father of the modern nectarine. When Zaiger
started making crosses on his own in the late 1950s, he originally sought
to develop new rootstocks for grafting trees, ignoring the fruits themselves. Almost all the crosses were sterile, like mules, but
Zaiger noticed that a few bore fruit. He started selecting the large,
attractive and flavorful ones, and he used their genes as building blocks
for future generations. Sitting in his Modesto office, Zaiger flips through
one of the notebooks documenting his early work. "Breeding fruit
is a game of numbers to break the links between desirable and undesirable
characteristics," he says. Hybrids between species provide great
genetic variability, and therefore chance for improvement, but of the
million crosses of various fruits Zaiger has made, only a tiny percentage
have proved valuable. Outside the office, ranks of young trees grow in blue
plastic tubs. Each spring, to mate varieties that would not naturally
bloom together, workers move trees between greenhouses maintained at different
temperatures, applying the pollen from one tree to the flowers of another.
They plant the seeds of the resulting fruits, wait several years for these
seedlings to bear, and repropagate the most promising in a full-scale
orchard for further evaluation. It took 20 years from the initial crosses of proto-Pluots
to the introduction of commercial varieties in 1989. Currently, some 2,333
acres of Pluots are growing in California, mostly in the Central Valley.
That's a 25-fold increase from five years ago. These fruits, once viewed
as specialty items, are increasingly available at supermarkets and farmers
markets. Each Wednesday in season, from May through September, Zaiger
leads a tour of his 125-acre test orchard for commercial growers to sample
experimental varieties, identified only by numbers. Each farmer hopes
to select and plant a new winner--a "candy bar," as they say--before
anyone else, to earn big bucks. "The right choice of varieties can make or break
a company," said Richard White, who has attended the gatherings for
14 years. "If you're not on the cutting edge, you'll find yourself
out of business." On a sweltering morning in late June, Zaiger walked
six growers through rows of 15-foot trees, consulted his notebook, and
stopped at 45GH74, a heart-shaped Pluot with speckled pink skin and crimson,
sugary flesh. They inspected the tree and its fruit, tasted, and offered
opinions. "It's a pitter," said one man--meaning a
fruit worthy of eating down to the stone, and therefore a possible winner
and candidate for naming. He filled a paper bag with samples for later
analysis. Other selections, less ripe or tasty, qualified only as "two-biters,"
or even "spitters." It's not only taste that counts. Just one flaw can
spell commercial doom for even the most delicious fruit, such as the Eden
Pride plumcot, which tends to crack at the blossom end. The only plumcot in widespread production, the early-season
Flavorella, offers gorgeous bright yellow color and incredibly intense
sweet-tart flavor. People love the taste, but the fruit drives farmers
crazy by falling to the ground just before harvest. Improved, farmer-friendly
plumcot varieties are in the pipeline. Most Apriums look and taste like apricots, with a tinge
of plum flavor, and are marketed as apricots. On the tour, however, Zaiger
showed off a dramatic albino Aprium. White-fleshed, large, luscious, yet
firm enough for shipping, it tasted bland. "Breeding material,"
he said. "We're still a few years off on that one." Even more exotic is the Peacotum, a blend of peach,
apricot and plum, a rosy-red creature with just a wisp of fuzz. It too
needs work, but a delicate white peach-plum hybrid bred by Zaiger is already
being marketed by the Tri Valley Growers cooperative as a "Snow Peach." The half-dozen chief varieties of Pluots in commercial
production ripen in two waves, late May through June and mid-July through
September, leaving a hiatus of several weeks in the middle. To maintain
his fruit's position at supermarkets and on restaurant menus, Zaiger is
scrambling to fill the gap with new varieties. The second, larger wave of Pluots begins this week
with the harvest of sweet and juicy yellow-skinned Flavor Queens and distinctive,
widely grown Dapple Dandys, which have speckled red skin and pink flesh. Despite his success, Zaiger, 73, remains easygoing
and unpretentious, speaking in the salt-of-the-earth twang of his Midwestern
boyhood. He drives a 10-year-old car and hunts with bow and arrows for
recreation. His wife, Betty, and children, Leith, Gary and Grant, play
active roles in the business, from evaluating fruit to answering phones;
the Zaiger stationery reads, "Family Organized to Improve Fruit Worldwide."
After the tour, several growers, heavily laden with bags of samples and
wobbling in the heat, repaired to the Zaiger home for lunch. Over Betty's
lasagna and cheese-and-spinach pie, they joked affably and talked shop. The growers agreed that in addition to creating a new
marketing niche, Pluots would partially replace plums. "Within 10
years, a quarter to a half of the plum business will be Pluots, from less
than a tenth today," said Richard White. "They have the cosmetics
and flavor to turn light buyers into heavy buyers." The Pluot's status as a privately invented fruit occasionally
leads to wrangles. Hickman-based Dave Wilson Nursery, which propagates
and licenses Zaiger's varieties, fights a constant battle to defend the
trademarks for Pluots and Apriums, to keep them from lapsing into generic
use. Some years ago, Michael Jackson, a large grower in
Kingsburg, trademarked the name "Dinosaur Egg" as his brand
for the Dapple Dandy, and adorned his shipping boxes with cute baby dinosaurs
hatching and frolicking. Zaiger claims he thought of the name first. A few growers, mostly in Europe and Chile, have tried
to avoid paying Zaiger royalties by sending "cultivar rustlers"
into orchards in the dead of night to filch budwood, which can be used
to propagate trees illegally. Zaiger uses bounty hunters to nab the thieves
and prove infringement. For consumers, these dramas mean little compared
to the opportunity to taste new, high-quality fruits. For a flavor of
the future, follow Steven Brenkwitz around his orchard as he checks on
ripening Pluots. "Look," he says, pointing to an oblong
greenish number, "it's the Hand Grenade, crunchy like an Asian pear.
And there's the Cherry Pluot--it looks like a giant radish, but it's the
tastiest thing you've ever eaten." His eyes blaze. "And this
is just the beginning--it's the 21st Century fruit." Plenty of Pluots
• Apriums: Trademarked name for apricot-plum hybrids,
majority apricot. Look and taste like apricots, with some plum flavor.
Varieties include Honey Rich, Flavor Delight. May to June. • Peacotums: Experimental Zaiger peach-apricot-plum
hybrids, not yet released. Large, round; rosy red skin, yellow flesh.
May to July. • Plum Parfait plumcot: Pinkish-orange skin, crimson
and amber marbled flesh; decent flavor. Late May to early June. First
Zaiger plum-apricot hybrid to be released, in early 1980s, for home garden
market. A sensation in its day, now obsolete. • Flavorosa Pluot: Flattened shape, like a doorknob;
dark purple skin, red flesh; sweet, with some sourness at skin and pit.
Late May to June, earliest commercial Pluot. • Flavorella plumcot: Bright yellow, velvety skin,
bright yellow flesh; intense sweet-tart flavor. Late May to June. Falls
off the tree when ripe, stores well. Floyd Zaiger's favorite. • Flavor Supreme Pluot: Mottled red over green
skin, red flesh; sweet flavor, resembles Elephant Heart plum. June. Zaiger
nicknamed it "Ugly Duckling." First commercial Pluot, introduced
1989, still tops for flavor. • Apex plumcot: Luther Burbank cross, introduced
1911. Skin deep pink or crimson, flesh honey-yellow; decent flavor. June.
California Rare Fruit • White peach-plums: A Zaiger hybrid, like a delicate
white peach. July. Sold in jars under S&W brand as "Snow Peaches,"
available at Ralphs and Albertsons supermarkets. • Flavor Queen Pluot: Yellow-greenish skin, yellow-orange
flesh; very sweet and juicy, with apricot aftertaste. Mid-July to August.
Delicious when fresh. Trees are short-lived. • Dapple Dandy Pluot: Skin distinctive maroon
with yellow dapple, flesh red and creamy white; excellent flavor. Late
July to August. Most widely grown Pluot, one of the best. Marketed by
Kingsburg Apple growers as "Dinosaur Egg." • Flavor King Pluot: Reddish-purple skin, crimson
flesh; rich, spicy flavor, low acidity. August. Fruit cracks, a problem
for farmers. • Flavorich Pluot: Large size, dark purple skin, firm yellow-orange flesh; sweet but mediocre flavor. Late August to early September. Commercial-quality Pluot. |
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