We just saw this very cool article about Floyd Zaiger. Take a look!
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Source: google.com
Publication date: 10/22/2010
Enjoyed a crisp white peach or a juicy plum this past summer?
Chances are that 85-year-old Floyd Zaiger was behind them in some way, through his disease-resistant root stocks, groundbreaking hybrids or commercial varieties that arrive in East Coast grocery stores unblemished.
“He eats, breathes and sleeps his trees, constantly thinking about their characteristics,” his daughter Leith Gardner said. “For my dad, it’s the love of his life, besides my mother.”
Zaiger’s 140-acre property on the outskirts of the California Central Valley city of Modesto is his laboratory. He and his family develop new varieties the old-fashioned way, by cross-pollinating his acres of leafy breeding stock and selecting for certain traits.
The painstaking process has paid off, with a hybrid plum-apricot he trademarked as the Pluot, and in Zaiger’s international reputation as a premiere developer of stone fruit, which are named for their hard pits.
Despite his age, Zaiger cruises the grove in a golf cart, working on new varieties that will be ready for market in several years.
“The Pluot was game-changing in my mind,” said Tom Gradziel, a pomologist at the University of California, Davis. “The plumcot cross-existed, but he saw potential in the plum’s sweetness and the apricot’s aromatics and crossed it back with the parent tree many times to bring out those characteristics — sweet but no bitter skin.”
Zaiger developed interspecies varieties like the aprium (part apricot and part plum), the peacotum (a hybrid of peach, apricot and plum) and the cherub (a cross between a cherry and a plum).
Gary Van Sickle, president of the California Tree Fruit growers organization, said Zaiger is the most prolific stone fruit breeder in the modern era.
“It takes somebody with vision to understand what the marketplace is going to want in a decade,” Van Sickle said.
What started as a hobby for Zaiger 55 years ago grew into an international business that is still family run. His daughter is the operation’s general manager. One son, Gary, runs the nursery and the other, Grant, tends the mature trees.
On a weekly field tasting tour with growers, Gardner squeezed a wedge of a fruit onto a handheld device that measures sugar in the juice.
Robert Woolley, the owner of Dave Wilson Nursery, plucked a plum from a high, sunny branch and took a bite.
“Whoa! That’s a sugar bomb,” he said. “It’s got everything except size.”
Even though researchers have made breakthroughs in fruit tree genome mapping recently — and despite the company’s name — Zaiger Genetics doesn’t splice genes or manipulate DNA to develop new plants.
It took researchers across the country and Europe 10 years to build a map of the peach genome, Gradziel said. But genomics has its limitations, he said. The field is in its infancy and might never duplicate Zaiger’s work.
“If you look at everything that Zaiger’s developed, none of those would be predictable with these new techniques,” Gradziel said. “Zaiger’s has a huge knowledge base and a huge germplasm to draw from. With linear breeding, we’ll lose his kind of out-of-the-box, creative, artistic, intuitive breeding.”
Zaiger and his staff make repeated and complex crosses in successive generations to make a bridge between two species. Their low-tech methods are painstaking and methodical.
He collects pollen with an eye shadow brush from a tree chosen for its flavor, then brushes it on the flower pistil of another tree chosen for its durability or resistance to disease.
Each of the 150,000 crosses currently in the orchard has a number to trace its lineage back to its great-great-grandparents or longer. Zaiger can track the expression of each characteristic in the progeny.
“The first thing I do when we see a tree with good characteristics and flavor is to open up the book and look at its pedigree,” Zaiger said.
These days, the book is a massive database of crosses.
“This is my bible,” he said, opening a three-ring binder in his office and pointing to the branches of an aprium hybrid’s family tree. “From here to here is six years work.”
From thousands of crosses, Zaiger and his children select a couple hundred to grow in a secondary plot. From those he chooses a few dozen to show off to growers every summer. With their feedback, he introduces a select few new varieties each year.
Each generation of trees takes three years to mature, and it can take decades for a successful variety to return a profit.
“We grew up with it, so we know you can’t be in a hurry,” Gardner said. “There’s always new material coming up the pipeline and we know that the next generation is going to bring new breakthroughs. We rely on the work we did 10 or 12 years ago.”
The Zaigers hold about 280 patents. Their best varieties, like the Pluot, are trademarked. Growers pay a royalty fee of $2.25 per tree, and 15 percent of the sales from their crop to Zaiger and marketers.
The company signed its first international contract in 1962 and now has contracts across Europe as well as New Zealand, South Africa, Australia, Argentina and Chile.
“Many breeders have successful varieties but Floyd’s contributions have been many and probably surpass everyone else for lifetime achievement,” said Eric Wuhl, director of research and development for Family Tree Farms in Reedley, Calif. “I don’t think a grower could grow from the beginning of the season to the end successfully without having Zaiger trees in the lineup.”
School is officially back in session bookmarking to another sweet summer in California. The end of summer used to mean the end of fresh summer stone fruit like peaches, plums and nectarines, but that’s changed over the past few seasons. California growers are constantly testing and naturally breeding new flavorful varieties of plums. If you recall our Aug. 14 post on Variety Tastings & Rootstock Tours you can see a taste testing session amongst California growers. They are not only breeding for flavor but they are also looking for varieties that harvest later and later into the year.
This means we can still get American grown plums in October! The most important thing to remember when buying fall stone fruit is to look at the PLUsticker for Country of Origin (COO). Southern Hemisphere fruit will just begin their production and sometimes the seasons overlap each other. So, to make sure you are buying produce that was grown and cared for by Americans make sure you check your labels before enjoying!
Friday started out as a typical day. But little did I know it was about to get exciting as I headed out to was another interesting day in the world of California tree fruit! Variety tasting and a rootstock tour were my next adventures as I continue learning about California tree fruit. I had never heard of either variety tasting or rootstock tours, so this was completely new to me.
As I approached the tasting, I noticed my soon-to-be father in law gather in a group. That was the second time I had ran into him in the past two days! I must say, it’s pretty cool that we work in the same industry. As I walked around the tables, plates of fresh peaches, plums and nectarines were displayed on the tables. They were for eating, and I brought an appetite!
Variety tastings are an opportunity for peach, plum and nectarine ‘breeders’ to showcase their new varieties of stone fruit, giving the growers and other industry members the opportunity to savor the latest developments in stone fruit. Breeders grow and analyze sample trees to develop the best quality peach, plum and nectarine varieties that they know will cater to peoples’ taste buds. That’s what it’s all about right- biting into the best stone fruit they’ve ever had? Variety tastings gives the growers knowledge and expands their opportunity to grow new varieties that they know shoppers will enjoy.
Rootstock tours are a different breed, don’t mind the pun. Rootstock tours allow growers to see tree root bases that can accommodate varieties and help the grower to grow the new varieties they would like to plant.
They accompany a variety tasting because they allow industry members to observe the tree’s growth and study their development for growth of new varieties. This rootstock tour was at UC Davis Kearney Agricultural Center. As we hopped on the back of a trailer, we made our way out into the orchards.
So now that you have a brief summary of what variety tastings and rootstock tours are and why they’re important to growing tree fruit, check out the video. And, don’t forget to leave us your thoughts in a comment. We love hearing from our readers.
SACRAMENTO, Calif., Aug. 9 — /PRNewswire/ — California’s specialty crop industries have a significant impact on the state’s economy yielding nearly $15.9 billion annually, or $43.5 million each day of the year, in “ripple effect” business activity as a result of collective industry spending, according to new research commissioned by the Buy California Marketing Agreement (BCMA), administrators of the “California Grown” program.
“The research clearly indicates that California’s specialty crops touch every aspect of California life and positively impact the economic vitality of our state,” said Maile Shanahan Geis, BCMA Executive Director. “Despite the challenges facing California agriculture – from intense global competition to the growing water crisis – the state’s specialty crops prove that the industry continues to be a world leader in agriculture production, which is a title Californians should be proud to protect.”
The “California Grown” campaign is an initiative to educate Californians about the importance of choosing California-grown products whenever they shop. The study examined the financial impact of fifteen California specialty crops including the dairy and wine sectors, as well as asparagus, avocados, cherries, cut flowers, figs, kiwifruit, nectarines, olives, peaches, pears, plums, raisins and table grapes.
The study, conducted by Dennis H. Tootelian, Ph.D., Director of the Center for Small Business at California State University, Sacramento, indicates the expenditures by the state’s specialty crop growers create a ripple effect spurring the growth of more than 137,435 jobs. When it comes to labor income, more than $5.2 billion is generated as a result of industry spending, which is more than $14.3 million each day of the year. These dollars go to wages and salaries for new employment, as well as increasing incomes for those already in the labor force – a portion of which is reinvested throughout California’s economy to pay for an array of goods and services. Read the rest of this entry »
Breast cancer cells - even the most aggressive type - died after treatments with peach and plum extracts in lab tests at Texas AgriLife Research recently, and scientists say the results are deliciously promising. Not only did the cancerous cells keel over, but the normal cells were not harmed in the process.AgriLife Research scientists say two phenolic compounds are responsible for the cancer cell deaths in the study, which was published in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry. The phenols are organic compounds that occur in fruits. They are slightly acidic and may be associated with traits such as aroma, taste or color.
“It was a differential effect which is what you’re looking for because in current cancer treatment with chemotherapy, the substance kills all cells, so it is really tough on the body,” said Dr. David Byrne, AgriLife Research plant breeder who studies stone fruit. “Here, there is a five-fold difference in the toxic intensity. You can put it at a level where it will kill the cancer cells - the very aggressive ones - and not the normal ones.”
Byrne and Dr. Luis Cisneros-Zevallos originally studied the antioxidants and phytonutrients in plums and found them to match or exceed the blueberry which had been considered superior to other fruits in those categories.
“The following step was to choose some of these high antioxidant commercial varieties and study their anticancer properties,” Cisneros-Zevallos said. “And we chose breast cancer as the target because it’s one of the cancers with highest incidence among women. So it is of big concern.”
According to the National Cancer Institute, there were 192,370 new cases of breast cancer in females and 1,910 cases in males in 2009. That year, 40,170 women and 440 men died from breast cancer. The World Health Organization reports that breast cancer accounts for 16 percent of the cancer deaths of women globally.
Cisneros-Zevallos, an AgriLife Research food scientist, said the team compared normal cells to two types of breast cancer, including the most aggressive type. The cells were treated with an extract from two commercial varieties, the “Rich Lady” peach and the “Black Splendor” plum.
“These extracts killed the cancer cells but not the normal cells,” Cisneros-Zevallos said.
A closer look at the extracts determined that two specific phenolic acid components - chlorogenic and neochlorogenic - were responsible for killing the cancer cells while not affecting the normal cells, Cisneros-Zevallos said.
The two compounds are very common in fruits, the researchers said, but the stone fruits such as plums and peaches have especially high levels.
“So this is very, very attractive from the point of view of being an alternative to typical chemotherapy which kills normal cells along with cancerous ones,” Byrne added.
The team said laboratory tests also confirmed that the compounds prevented cancer from growing in animals given the compounds.
Byrne plans to examine more fully the lines of the varieties that were tested to see how these compounds might be incorporated into his research of breeding plums and peaches. Cisneros-Zevallos will continue testing these extracts and compounds in different types of cancer and conduct further studies of the molecular mechanisms involved.
The work documenting the health benefits of stone fruit has been supported by the Vegetable and Fruit Improvement Center at Texas A&M University, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the California Tree Fruit Agreement.
* USDA and CDFA (California Department of Food and Ag) point out appropriately that this research is preliminary and not conclusive, and that to fully understand the effect on humans additional research studies, including human clinical studies, are needed. Many want to know where to get these compounds, if one can cook the plum or eat it raw, and whether these substances might work on other cancers. None of that is known yet - research like this is often a very long process but these preliminary results are encouraging and will surely lead to additional studies.
Organic grower Vern Peterson let us in on some cool info. In the video clip below from PPNTV, Vern describes how growers will actually have to wait 6 years before a stonefruit tree is ready to produce marketable fruit. Each tree has to reach a certain level of maturity to be able to deliver the proper nutrients to developing fruit.
This is what makes stonefruit growers unique compared to row crops like cotton or wheat. Stonefruit growers are in it for the long haul and treat the land and their orchards accordingly. Through good practices, continued research and developing technology, stonefruit growers are careful to keep an ecological balance in their orchards to hopefully ensure many more years of fresh California fruit.
It is an exciting time of year in California’s Central Valley as stone fruit trees have emerged from winter dormancy and begun to bloom! February marks the official opening of the Blossom Trail, an official route designed to provide the most spectacular views of the orchards in bloom. The Central Valley is thee top producing stone fruit region in the United States and this period in the life of a stone fruit tree is the most celebrated in our region.
Tourists and residents celebrate the beauty of bloom with festivals, art exhibits, 10K runs, car rides and bike tours through the countryside to see (and smell) the millions of blossoms. The blossom season begins in February and runs through March and can be a great intro to a trip to the Sequoia National Forest or Yosemite.
The California tree fruit industry has long had a system in place to trace fruit back to the orchard where it was grown. Identifying the fruit grower and packer starts with information printed on every fruit container. Each box is stamped with a marking that contains a series of numbers. This series includes the date and packer identification number and a grower lot identification marking. Those numbers, along with the information on the box label, can be used to quickly locate the fruit packer. Many packinghouses also stamp separate numbers on the box that identify each individual grower and the specific orchard in which the fruit was grown.
In tests performed on fruit samples taken from retail stores throughout the U.S., it has taken less than 5 minutes to identify the packer, grower and orchard where the fruit was grown. In the unlikely event that fresh peaches, plums or nectarines cause an illness, this traceback system could quickly identify the source. This helps protect consumers and ensures that unaffected growers and packers could continue shipping peaches, plums and nectarines.
Take a look at plum grower Jeff Boldt explain how it all works!
The party’s over and it is almost time for plum trees to crash! After a summer spent sizing up sweet fruit for harvest, plum trees are dropping their leaves and getting ready for a winters rest.Growers measure the hours the tree has spent in weather below 45°. Most of the California varieties need between 700 and 1,000 chill hours before bloom in spring.
Part of what makes the San Joaquin Valley so unique for growing Stonefruit is the cold winters and dense fog layer. While the hot summer sun helps trees pack nutrients and natural sugars into the fruit, our fog layer during the winter helps each tree get the necessary “Chill Hours.” The layer of fog helps keep the valley floor 10°-20° cooler than it would be without.
Below is plum grower Paul Buxman talking about some of the other features of the Valley that help produce great plums.
