[HN Gopher] A basket of new fruit varieties is coming your way
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A basket of new fruit varieties is coming your way
Author : vinni2
Score : 34 points
Date : 2026-03-06 05:46 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| Cider9986 wrote:
| The improvements in fruit over the years has improved my quality
| of life so much. If you have never tried a sumo citrus, I
| recommend it -- they are only in season till April iirc.
|
| Benefits of sumo citrus: Easy to peel Pith does not remain
| attached to orange Super juicy Excellent taste and texture,
| balanced acid and sugar levels.
|
| https://archive.is/wBogT
| HerbManic wrote:
| It is always a good time of year then they come along. I have
| had WAY too many of them but thats not going to stop me from
| having many more.
| fanatic2pope wrote:
| Funny enough I was eating a Sumo as I came across your comment.
| They are certainly very tasty, but for the price (which is high
| at least here in Ohio) I much prefer the tartness of a
| traditional in-season California satsuma.
| throwup238 wrote:
| All the California satsumas I can find here in California
| have all converged on the dekopon/Sumo taste and form. It's
| confusing because the satsumas on Google images are still
| mostly the round ones without the bumps.
|
| The prices vary wildly. At the end of the season I can find
| them in some ethnic grocers for $0.33 a pound while right now
| they're $1.50-2 a pound. When they were first coming out
| years ago they were $4 a piece at Trader Joes.
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| I love fruits and vegetables, and am excited about this! That
| said, I do worry long-term about changes to increase sugar
| content. Sure it's delicious, but I think it's almost strictly
| worse for me. If only the high-sugar items sell, it will become
| harder to find low-sugar items. Not to mention the amount of
| self-control that will be required.
| leptons wrote:
| One thing I love about low-sugar citrus is the ability for it
| to not spike my sugar levels.
|
| I use Miracle Fruit extract which alters the taste buds
| temporarily to turn sour flavors into sweet flavors. I can eat
| an entire lime and it tastes like sweet candy, with no real
| sugar content. No artificial sweetening either.
| prewett wrote:
| I wish they'd sell old varieties of apples. The new ones all
| insist of having Red Delicious (so called) as part of the genetic
| makeup. It does not impart a good flavor. There are all these
| nice old ones, like Cortland and Winesap, but you can't get them
| anywhere.
| Tomte wrote:
| I love Boskoop, and they are thankfully still all over German
| supermarkets. If not, Holstein Cox will do, and if they have
| it, Elstar.
|
| The real good ones, like Berlepsch, are hard to find here,
| though, unless you travel to a plantation.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| +1 on Boskoop. But also Cox Orange and James Grief
| dodger-dog wrote:
| Have you ever even Honey-Crisped, Bro?
| simojo wrote:
| Not if you have a local amish plug
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Cosmic crisp seems very commonly available(at least, here in
| colorado) and has a great taste and texture with no red
| delicious genes present
| grosswait wrote:
| I'd like to see a citation - I'm not sure this Red Delicious
| assertion is true.
| smashed wrote:
| Depends on where you are maybe? Cortland is still readily
| available here (Quebec). Hope it stays that way, I'm feeling
| slightly worried. Seems like the trend of trademarked new apple
| varieties has not quite caught up here yet as orchards are not
| interested in replacing tried and true stocks.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah, I think my neighbor has a few Cortland trees in New
| England. Lots of Mcintoshes which aren't great for cooking
| but generally good for eating. Apples are probably about the
| last thing I'd say you couldn't get varieties of.
| ac29 wrote:
| There's an apple orchard that sells at the farmers market in my
| city with >40 seasonal varieties, most of which you'd never see
| at a supermarket. Apples grow well in a lot of the US, its
| worth looking for local options
| kpil wrote:
| In Sweden and I think Europe, there seems to be quite much
| product development in apples. I think one of the reasons is
| that storage seems to have been more or less perfected so that
| the produce can be sold over almost a whole year.
|
| Using only traditional methods there are several "new" Swedish
| varieties, Aroma, Frida and Saga that are very nice - and
| especially Saga is absolutely fantastic - On par or better that
| international varieties Jazz, Pink Lady and Honeycrisp.
|
| Some of the more traditional varieties are also sold more and
| for a longer period because of the improved storage, even
| though that I think they have a shorter storage window.
| whycome wrote:
| I always feel personally attacked when people bad-mouth (ha)
| the Red Delicious. It's true that many are this mealy disaster
| -- but I think that's a product of crappy long cellar times and
| trying to get money for 'old' apples. If you get a good fresh
| one, it should be the right level of tart, sweet, crisp, and
| juicy. And when they are good, they are probably my favorite.
| It's just so damn hard to get the good ones and no great ways
| to tell if they're good before biting in.
| SauntSolaire wrote:
| I've picked them straight from the tree and they still end up
| a mealy disaster. But hey, maybe I'm just bad at picking 'em.
| sublinear wrote:
| I don't really care if my food is GMO as much as I worry about
| nutrient content being reduced to cut costs.
|
| What is the incentive here?
|
| I don't want to live in a world where fruit is bastardized into
| candy, meat is missing amino acids in the protein, and everyone
| has fucking diabetes as a result and dies at 40.
|
| We don't even need gene editing to have seen this game played
| before. It happened throughout the previous century. Look at the
| history of iceberg lettuce and other watery slop like cheap
| tomatoes.
| detourdog wrote:
| My GMO concerns are all centered around the vulnerability of
| monoculture crops. Having a variety seems to make the food
| supply more resilient.
| passwordoops wrote:
| Faced with a full-length pop-up saying they care about my privacy
| just made me think, "if you cared about my privacy, you wouldn't
| track me and therefore wouldn't need ny consent for anything"
| Cpoll wrote:
| They bury the "Reject" button behind two clicks too.
| mmooss wrote:
| The Economist tries hard to normalize GMO food, without ever
| raising the issues and addressing them.
|
| Whatever one thinks of that issue, this technique is deception:
| It decieves people into thinking that it's normal, that there are
| no issues; it makes it easy to just follow, hard to question.
| People follow norms, and that's how you convice them to put aside
| their concerns.
|
| > Over thousands of years of domestication, humans have moulded
| fruit to their liking. ... As Pairwise's blackberries and
| cherries show, advances in gene editing are allowing fruits to be
| altered in new ways. crispr, the most popular such technique at
| the moment ...
|
| > The European Union's Parliament and Council, the bloc's
| governing body, reached a provisional deal in December to
| "simplify" the process for marketing plants bred through new
| genomic techniques, such as by scrapping the need to label them
| any differently from conventional ones. That seems an
| appropriately fruitful approach.
|
| But there is this interesting tidbit, purely from the money-
| making perspective:
|
| > ... unlike existing genetically modified crops, those made
| using crispr do not require dna from a foreign organism to be
| inserted--a practice that experience shows puts customers off.
| linkregister wrote:
| Your comment presupposes the benefits of GMO agriculture are
| outweighed by the costs. If we make assertions, we should back
| them up.
| gruez wrote:
| >Whatever one thinks of that issue, this technique is
| deception: It decieves people into thinking that it's normal,
| that there are no issues; it makes it easy to just follow, hard
| to question. People follow norms, and that's how you convice
| them to put aside their concerns.
|
| Should every article about vaccines also include a disclaimer
| about how some people think they cause autism?
| themafia wrote:
| If your goal is to help allay the fears of people who hold
| that view, then obviously, yes!
|
| If your goal is constantly punch down and find a class of
| people you're "allowed" to bully for thinking differently,
| then by all means, proceed as you have.
| azan_ wrote:
| > The Economist tries hard to normalize GMO food, without ever
| raising the issues and addressing them.
|
| And you also did not raise any issue, just asserted that there
| are some. GMO is amazing.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| I could agree to a point, the most commonly planted GMO crops
| are Roundup-Ready grains and soy, which encourage spraying even
| more atrazine on fields[1]. That does of course also mean
| increased yields, but the tradeoff is not unambiguously good.
| However the varieties discussed in this article clearly don't
| have that problem, knocking out genes to emphasize desirable
| characteristics seems much more appealing, though I suppose I'd
| rather see increasing nutrient density over making seeds less
| chewy, even if that meant adding DNA from other plants[2].
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundup_Ready
|
| 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_tomato#Biotechnology
| comrade1234 wrote:
| Glad I live where growing this unnecessary genetically engineered
| shit is illegal. Patents on food shouldn't exist.
| Cpoll wrote:
| Plant patents predate GMOs. If you cross-pollinate or graft
| into a new cultivar, you can patent it.
|
| Here's a climbing rose patent from 1930:
| https://patents.google.com/patent/USPP1P/en
| deepriverfish wrote:
| one thing I don't like about fruits nowadays is that they're too
| sweet, I don't remember grape being so sweets when I was younger
| for example, it's like eating sugary water.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| They're a disaster. I have had to stop eating bananas and
| grapes for this reason. Also, taking the seeds out of grapes
| makes them much less healthy.
| liveoneggs wrote:
| have you had those cotton candy grapes?
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