The Perfect Fruit
Good Breeding, Bad Seeds, and the Hunt for the Elusive Pluot
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- ¥2,800
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- ¥2,800
発行者による作品情報
There's no such thing as non-genetically-altered fruit. Even that organic peach or heirloom tomato is the result of hundreds and even thousands of years of crossbreeding. Since the dawn of agriculture, people have been obsessively tinkering to develop fruits that are hardier, healthier, and better-tasting. After a couple millennia of this, a handful of farmers in California's San Joaquin Valley believe they just may have developed the perfect fruit: a sweet, juicy, luscious plum-apricot hybrid known as a pluot.
In Pluot, William Brantley goes in search of what it takes to trick nature into producing culinary greatness-and to bring it to a market near you. The story begins with Floyd Zaiger, a humble and wily farmer who is arguably the greatest fruit breeder in the world. From there, it stretches both back and forward: back through a long line of visionaries, fruit smugglers, and mad geniuses, many of whom have been driven to dazzling extremes in the pursuit of exotic flavors; and forward through the ranks of farmers, scientists, and salesmen who make it their life's work to coax deliciousness out of stubborn and unpredictable plants. The result is part biography, part cultural history, and part horticultural inquest-a meditation on the surprising power of perfect food to change the way we live.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
After a conversion experience at the Los Angeles farmers' market where he first tasted the sweet, succulent plum-apricot hybrid known as a pluot, freelance food writer Brantley embarked on this tasty exploration of the stone-fruit industry. In his telling, it is that rare acre of American agriculture that still has room for independents, like legendary fruit breeder Fred Zaiger, whose epic labors he waits years to learn whether a new hybrid will be edible or growable sparked an industry shift toward fruit that actually tastes good. Brantley delves into the complicated, sometimes cut-throat world of the San Joaquin Valley's family fruit growers and marketers, squeezed by rising costs and ever more powerful and demanding retailers, always angling for the "Summer Passionate" consumer segment of lifestyle epicureans. In his chronicle of the 2007 growing season, their livelihoods hang on the unpredictable whims of nature and marketplace; perfect weather yields a delicious crop, yet the fickle Summer Passionates refuse to buy. The light-handed tome is more of a snack than a banquet, but Brantley's engaging mixture of agronomy, reportage and food porn "When I bit into it, it felt almost liquid, like plum jelly" goes down easy.
