I was intrigued to learn of the wider strategy envisaged to keep the newly established East Malling Research at the forefront of technical development, which was outlined at the berry-fruit conference last week.
No one would deny that in its 90-year history East Malling deserves the acclaim that has taken its scientific work on fruit culture to the top of the tree. But this it would seem is no longer enough - stepping outside its somewhat cosseted, leafy environment into the 21st century is a major change.
As I understand it, the aim is for the centre to become a “total fruit service” that will embrace everything from packaging and logistics to watching consumer demands in terms of health and nutrition.
By any standards this is a vast canvas, on which trade organisations and government bodies have already begun to paint. Gathering meaningful information and experience in a new quadrant can take years, and such is the rate of development, that it can quickly become obsolete. This must be particularly so for EMR if it chooses to become involved in tropical fruit and flowers where so far it has had little remit.
And the fresh produce industry is not quite the open book that it was 20 years ago.
Information on trials, new products and much more are now often closely guarded commercial secrets, simply because the retail trade is in the hands of very few, large, customers. The last thing they have in mind is to share a perceived advantage that one day may make their tills ring.
Category management reinforces this as it is designed to bind in both distributors and growers as tightly and confidentially as possible. Even if growers and packers, initially encouraged to undertake new projects, labour hard and long they are then told there is no longer any interest because the situation has changed.
No-one can deny that linking to public needs is highly desirable. But in trading terms this always throws up the same question: do customers really get what they want? Or is choice actually in the hands of the retailers?
One area shared by all, in my opinion, is interest in flavour, where definitions remain either antiquated or at best blurred. Descriptive words such as crunchy, sweet, sour, and juicy are plentiful, but do they really do justice? Perhaps there is a new type of classification to define more accurately what we really like. After all, the wine industry has all but developed its own language.
It will not be an easy path. For example, US breeder Kirk Larson at the same event admitted freely that one strawberry variety might differ so widely over California’s season because of weather and climate that it could be mistaken for a different product.
So if anyone can come up with a solution to find out what makes fruit in particular really taste the way it does - beyond sugar/starch/acid ratios - they have my vote.
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