An Overview of our Work (Part 2: Kiwis)

Torturing Fruit for the Greater Good








KIWIS


On a family kiwi farm near the small town of Naossa in Macedonia (about three hours north of Volos and a stunning mountainous area renowned for its high-quality fruit), a farmer in the 1980's planted kiwi seeds and selected plants he liked. Though not undertaken in any particularly scientific manner, and in spite of the fact that such an approach has very little probability of leading to significant improvements, the guy may have gotten extremely lucky. The result of his informal breeding effort is a new variety grown only in that area (and in quite small quantity thus far, though interest is growing) and known as Tsechelides, after the man who found it. By all appearances, the new variety is a miracle. The plants produce enormous quantities of fruit:


And the fruits are astonishingly uniform, well-shaped, and HUGE. Here is one next to the leading commercial variety, Hayward:

Even though Hayward is the current leader, it's a small fruit by comparison and lacks uniformity. So anyway, sure, Tsechelides looks good; but how does it compare in all the other quality characteristics? That's where we come in. Side by side with Hayward, we're running Tsechelides fruit through a battery of postharvest quality tests to see how it measures up. The tests are essentially the same as those mentioned before for apples:

but the motivation is different. Whereas for apples we're optimizing postharvest handling practices, here we're doing a simple variety evaluation. How acidic is it? How sweet? How firm? How does it hold up under storage? Interested as some of us are in plant breeding and the development of new commercially-acceptable cultivars (ahem!), this is an interesting venture. And the active cooperation between the grower, the university, and industry (read: large fruit handlers/exporters interested in growing the Tsechclides market share) has been inspiring.