Fruit breeders planting seeds of global success
Large investments are being made in the high-tech labs and experimental ag fields where Kern County scientists breed new varieties of fruit to help farmers around the world adapt to shifting consumer tastes, developing markets and changing climates.
Two local operations whose intellectual property accounts for varieties covering tens of thousands of acres have recently poured money into new, state-of-the-art research facilities in Wasco and McFarland. One recently opened and the other is under development.
The physical expansions at Sun World and International Fruit Genetics are another positive sign for a local food-innovations industry that, since being spawned by local growers such as carrot giant Bolthouse Farms, has grown to employ dozens of highly educated specialists.
Work done at these innovation facilities is not genetic modification, per se, but conventional cross-breeding of plants to bring out desirable traits ranging from a crisp crunch to a long shelf life.
The activity is increasingly important to the future of global agriculture, said the president of the California Fresh Fruit Association, Ian LeMay. He said Kern County is fortunate to have some of the field’s major players.
CONSUMER FOCUS
After decades in which industry concerns dominated, such as a variety’s ability to withstand long shipments, he said growers now must respond to consumers’ ever-more sophisticated demands for grapes with a certain flavor or an
apricot with just the right blush. The task becomes more complicated when considering that tastes vary significantly depending where the fruit is sold.
“You have growers now really looking and listening to what that consumer demand is and making appropriate decisions to plant what’s in high demand,” LeMay said.
The same holds true for farmers looking to increase their yield per acre and reduce the amount of cold weather their orchards need to produce properly. LeMay said fruit breeders help address these kinds of challenges.
Kevin Andrew, senior vice president at Bakersfield-based farming company Illume, which plants varieties developed by Sun World and IFG, said local fruit-breeding has created noticeable improvements in fruit.
He recalled telling someone years ago that if grapes tasted better, sales would rise.
“Sometimes the box had more flavor than the grapes,” said Andrew, a former chief operating officer at Sun World. He added that new flavor profiles seem to have actually changed consumer preferences.
FAMOUS PRODUCTS
While much of Sun
World’s and IFG’s efforts are focused internationally, local shoppers may recognize some of the company’s innovations. IFG came up with the table grape variety that tastes like cotton candy, for example, and Sun World’s corporate lineage introduced the first seedless watermelons, sweet red peppers and vine-ripened tomatoes.
Sun World, based in Palm Desert with a substantial local presence, was founded in the mid-1970s in Bakersfield as a packer and marketer of fresh
produce. Its acquisition in 1989 of Superior Farming Co., a substantial local landowner at the time, gave Sun World its start in fruit breeding.
After a series of corporate changes including its 2013 purchase by Los Angeles investment firm Renewable Resources Group, which still owns the company, Sun World sold the last of its food-production operations in May 2019 to tighten its focus on fruit breeding.
That kind of work used to be done in the Fresno area by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and by the University of California. But as public investment in the activity has waned, Sun World President and CEO David Marguelas said, private industry has stepped up.
Focused on table grapes and stone fruit, the company now has more than 300 registered trademarks and licenses 1,700 growers in places like Chile, Israel, South Africa and Spain.
STRONG GROWTH
It has gone from zero licensed acres of planted crops in 2001 to 12,000 acres in 2010 and about 50,000 this year, Marguleas said, adding the company
charges a percentage of royalties based on the quantity of fruit produced and sold by its licensees. He said the company has 30 employees stationed around the globe to help farmers maximize their yields and produce consistent quality.
Sun World’s new Wasco research facility, at 17,000 square feet, is four to five times larger than its previous facility nearby. It’s surrounded by 160 acres of farmland used for research and development.
The company’s team of about 20 chemists, biologists and molecular scientists evaluates as many as 70,000 seedlings a year. Of that, only two or three table
grape varieties emerge on the market, along with half a dozen stone-fruit varieties, Marguleas said.
“It’s a very imprecise process, which results in a lot of eventual precision,” he said, “in that we’re looking for just the right, perfect new seedless grape, the perfect red-fleshed plum with loads of natural sugar and antioxidants and the perfect apricot with a nice sort of blush and wonderful apricot aroma.” He estimated that the process of coming up with a new variety takes eight to 10 years.
What’s sometimes tricky, Marguleas said, is looking into the “proverbial crystal ball” to anticipate what consumers will look for a decade from now. A company goal that doesn’t rely on guessing, he said, is coming up with fruit that can be grown in more environmentally sustainable ways, requiring fewer soil amendments, chemicals and water.
NEARBY COMPETITION
IFG, a friendly local competitor of Sun World, was founded in 2001 by a former Sun World plant breeder. With offices in Bakersfield and a research center in Delano, IFG’s focus has been on improving consumers’ experience on eating grapes, raisins and cherries, CEO Andy Higgins said.
Having outgrown its existing buildings and fields, the company bought land this year in McFarland, where it has already begun planting experimental varieties and expects to begin construction in spring on four buildings totaling about 35,000 square feet.
The project will add space for cold storage, administration, training, post-harvest evaluation and a full laboratory. Part of the idea, Higgins said, is to make the company more attractive for the sake of bringing in top talent. It currently employs about 20 scientists, he added.
IFG licenses its varieties to farmers in 14 countries combining for more than 70,000 acres of trademarked produce. It has 45 patented varieties and more than 1,000 licensees.
Though table grapes have been a mainstay, Higgins said, raisins have become a focus because of industry demand for new varieties. There’s also been an emphasis on cherries because changing weather patterns have created a need for trees that don’t require as many “chill hours” to produce quality fruit.
Higgins said the company is happy to help.
“We’re proud to be a part of the community and doing these things that are ultimately changing the world’s perception of a major category” of produce, he said.
NEW YORK — Charley Pride, country music’s first Black superstar whose rich baritone on such hits as “Kiss an Angel Good Morning” helped sell millions of records and made him the first Black member of the Country Music Hall of Fame, has died. He was 86.
Pride died Saturday in Dallas of complications from COVID-19, according to Jeremy Westby of the public relations firm 2911 Media.
“I’m so heartbroken that one of my dearest and oldest friends, Charley Pride, has passed away. It’s even worse to know that he passed away from COVID-19. What a horrible, horrible virus. Charley, we will always love you,” Dolly Parton tweeted.
Pride released dozens of albums and sold more than 25 million records during a career that began in the mid1960s. Hits besides “Kiss an Angel Good Morning” in 1971 included “Is Anybody Goin’ to San Antone,” “Burgers and Fries,” “Mountain of Love,” and “Someone Loves You Honey.”
He had three Grammy Awards, more than 30 No. 1 hits between 1969 and 1984, won the Country Music Association’s Top Male Vocalist and Entertainer of the Year awards in 1972 and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2000.
The Smithsonian in Washington acquired memorabilia from Pride, including a pair of boots and one of his guitars, for the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Ronnie Milsap called him a “pioneer” and said that without his encouragement, Milsap might never gone to Nashville. “To hear this news tears out a piece of my heart,” he said in a statement.
Other Black country stars came before Pride, namely
DeFord Bailey, who was an Grand Ole Opry member between 1927 and 1941. But until the early 1990s, when Cleve Francis came along, Pride was the only Black country singer signed to a major label. In 1993, he joined the Opry cast in Nashville.
“They used to ask me how it feels to be the ‘first colored country singer,’ ” he told The Dallas Morning News in 1992. “Then it was ‘first Negro country singer;’ then ‘first black country singer.’ Now I’m the ‘first African-American country singer.’ That’s about the only thing that’s changed. This country is so race-conscious, so ate-up with colors and pigments. I call it ‘skin hangups’ — it’s a disease.”
Pride was raised in Sledge, Mississippi, the son of a sharecropper. He had seven brothers and three sisters.
In 2008 while accepting a Lifetime Achievement Award as part of the Mississippi Governor’s Awards for Excellence in the Arts, Pride said he never focused on race.
“My older sister one time said, ‘Why are you singing THEIR music?’ ” Pride said. “But we all understand what the y’all-and-us-syndrome has been. See, I never as an individual accepted that, and
I truly believe that’s why I am where I am today.”
As a young man before launching his singing career, he was a pitcher and outfielder in the Negro American League with the Memphis Red Sox and in the Pioneer League in Montana.
After playing minor league baseball a couple of years, he ended up in Helena, Montana, where he worked in a zinc smelting plant by day and played country music in nightclubs at night.
Pride was part of the Texas Rangers’ ownership group for the last 10 years and the team will fly the flags at half-staff at Globe Life Field and Globe Life Park today and Monday in his memory.
“The Texas Rangers join the country music world in mourning the loss of Charley Pride. While Mr. Pride was a legendary performer who entertained millions of fans in the United States and around the world, we will remember him as a true friend to this franchise,” the team said in a statement.
After a tryout with the New York Mets, Pride visited Nashville and broke into country music when Chet Atkins, head of RCA Records, heard two of his demo tapes and signed him.
To ensure that Pride was judged on his music and not his race, his first few singles were sent to radio stations without a publicity photo. After his identity became known, a few country radio stations refused to play his music.
For the most part, though, Pride said he was well received. Early in his career, he would put white audiences at ease when he joked about his “permanent tan.”
“Music is the greatest communicator on the planet Earth,” he said in 1992. “Once people heard the sincerity in my voice and heard me project and watched my delivery, it just dissipated any apprehension or bad feeling they might have had.”
Throughout his career, he sang positive songs instead of sad ones often associated with country music.
“Music is a beautiful way of expressing oneself and I truly believe music should not be taken as a protest,” he told The Associated Press in 1985. “You can go too far in anything — singing, acting, whatever — and become politicized to the point you cease to be an entertainer.”
In 1994, he wrote his autobiography, “Pride: The Charley Pride Story,” in which he disclosed he was mildly manic depressive.
He had surgery in 1997 to remove a tumor from his right vocal cord.
He received the Living Legend award from The Nashville Network/Music City News, recognizing 30 years of achievement, in 1997.
“I’d like to be remembered as a good person who tried to be a good entertainer and made people happy, was a good American who paid his taxes and made a good living,” he said in 1985. “I tried to do my best and contribute my part.”