I always wondered what the big thing was with pomegranates. Turns out that a lot of the varieties are much better tasting. Like comparing a mandarin to a navel.
Obviously there is a huge untapped market with a little education. One per year is way too low..
At least someone is taking this on.
America’s Pomegranates Are a Bore. One Researcher is Using His Grandfather’s Fruit to Change That
John Chater tastes a pomegranate at a research field site in California. (Courtesy UC-Riverside)
There’s a lot more to pomegranates than their reputation in the U.S.
would suggest. The fruits are known for their bittersweet juice, hard
seeds, and their exploding-puzzle-box configuration that can leave
kitchens looking like crime scenes.
Around the world, pomegranates take on many different forms. They can
be sweeter, softer, or come in different flavors and colors: pink,
yellow, or even white, instead of the U.S.-standard red.
Ask someone from Iran, India, Turkmenistan or Spain who grows the best
pomegranates, and they’d likely say Iran, India, Turkmenistan or Spain,
respectively. But none of these foreigners would think too highly of a
U.S. pomegranate, according to John Chater, a geneticist at the
University of California, Riverside, and major pomegranate aficionado.
“So many people will come up to me and say, why are the pomegranates
in the United States so terrible? Why can’t I find the same flavors that
I’m getting back at home?” says Chater. They’ll say, “these
pomegranates in the United States, they have very hard seeds, they’re
bitter, they’re low quality, what’s going on here?”
This sounds like a harsh take on what many Americans would consider a delicious fruit – but do we even know what we’re missing?
A Grandfather’s Pomegranate Legacy
Chater inherited his interest in pomegranates from his grandfather, a Lebanese immigrant, who was a pomegranate breeder.
Growing up in California, Chater was exposed to a diversity of
pomegranates, including cultivars his grandfather brought over from the
Middle East and new varieties that he bred himself.
“When I’d visit him… he had a really nice garden and a little
(pomegranate) operation going on there,” says Chater. “He showed me a
closer look of what was going on and what he was doing, and that really
turned me on to it.”
Chater began working on pomegranates himself as a graduate student,
where his research advisors let him choose his own projects, study crops
and even specific cultivars – including his grandfather’s best,
Eversweet.
Wonderful Serendipity
Chater is now studying pomegranates from around the world, in hopes
of bringing some of their best qualities to the crops grown and sold in
the U.S. The vast majority of pomegranates on the U.S. market today are
grown in California and are a single variety: Wonderful.
But Wonderful wasn’t carefully selected for American consumers or
American growers, says Chater. Instead, this pomegranate was in the
right place at the right time, and serendipitously came to dominate the
market.
As the story goes, the company we now know as The Wonderful Company
acquired some farmland in California’s central valley that happened to
have some pomegranates planted on it.
Co-owners Stewart and Lynda Resnick originally planned to remove the
trees and plant citrus. But after a little digging, the Resnicks learned
that some medical professionals were suggesting the fruit had
beneficial properties, and that other cultures revered the pomegranate
for its medicinal qualities.
They decided to keep the trees.
[ I am sure glad we did not do this with apples, Of course the wild ones were so awful it was inevitable - arclein]
These pomegranates happened to be Wonderful. Thanks to their commercial success, Wonderful became the industry standard.
“You know, in my opinion it’s not probably the best way to choose an
industry standard – just because it’s sitting there,” says Chater.
Five different pomegranate cultivars.
Better Pomegranate Taste
Meanwhile, the rest of the world continues to enjoy a wide range of
delicious pomegranate diversity. That’s why Chater thinks we can do
better than Wonderful.
Some pomegranate breeding research is as simple as tasting different
varieties to see which are best. Researchers conduct taste trials called
sensory panels where participants rate parameters like the sweetness or
bitterness of different fruits.
Chater’s team was recently awarded a grant from the California
Department of Food and Agriculture to find out how receptive school
children would be to pomegranates in their lunches. Are they more likely
to eat pomegranates over apples or oranges? Are they more receptive to
some pomegranate varieties over others?
Thanks to modern biotechnology, plant breeders like Chater can now
analyze the chemical profiles of different varieties which allows them
to study why different varieties have such different tastes. And, with
increasing frequency, they can trace different chemical compounds back
to specific genes, which can greatly accelerate the breeding process.
But even the most delicious pomegranate won’t be able to infiltrate
the U.S. market unless the crop itself can keep up with Wonderful.
Wonderful has high yields and, in Chater’s words, “really nice” pest
and disease resistance. Any new varieties would need to have these
traits, too, else it would pose too great of a risk for growers to make
the switch from Wonderful.
The Future of Pomegranates
Chater has big ambitions for pomegranates. Besides better taste and
more varieties, he’s interested in testing the staining properties of
the different juices and working on easier-to-open varieties.
“One day we will get a pomegranate with a zipper peel or an easier
way to open it up. But right now, that’s a major problem – most people
on average eat less than one pomegranate per year,” says Chater. “How
many know how to open one up without causing a major mess?”
He’s got a lot of work ahead of him, but he hopes he’ll have help in the future.
“I have a new son just 6 months old, maybe he’ll like pomegranates,” says Chater. “It seems to skip a generation.”
He adds: “Hopefully down the line somebody likes pomegranates as much as I do and will continue to support crop improvement.”
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