Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/769560
22 JANUARY 15, 2017 Good Fruit Grower www.goodfruit.com SWEETNESS FLAVOR FIRMNESS SHELF LIFE SIZE EXTERNAL COLOR PRODUCERS PACKERS CONSUMERS MARKET CLEARING PRICE PRODUCERS PACKERS CONSUMERS MARKET CLEARING PRICE PRODUCERS PACKERS CONSUMERS MARKET CLEARING PRICE PRODUCERS PACKERS CONSUMERS MARKET CLEARING PRICE PRODUCERS PACKERS CONSUMERS MARKET CLEARING PRICE PRODUCERS PACKERS CONSUMERS MARKET CLEARING PRICE $2.00 PER POUND $1.50 $1.00 $.50 .40 .34 1.90 .45 .65 .31 1.44 1.40 .55 .17 1.21 .97 .54 .36 .75 .90 .80 .18 .60 1.04 .43 .26 .02 .40 CHERRIES: How much are producers, packers and consumers willing to pay for these attributes? SOURCE: KARINA GALLARDO, WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY JARED JOHNSON/GOOD FRUIT GROWER at using genetic markers to improve breeding of new fruit cultivars. Chengan Yue, an associate professor and Bachman Endowed Chair in horticultural marketing at the University of Minnesota, led a socioeconomics research team on the project, though Gallardo, who works at WSU's Puyallup Extension center, supervised portions of the research. Other collaborators were Vicki McCracken and James McFerson from WSU and James Luby from Minnesota. The first stage of RosBREED ended in 2014. A second round expanding the genetic marker research to include disease resistance is ongoing. Gallardo's team is part of that, too. Likewise, Evans was and still is one of about 134 collaborators on the entire RosBREED project. Gallardo and the team started by interviewing breeders to narrow down a long list of quality attributes to six for each type of fruit. For apples, they settled on crispness, flavor, external appearance, shelf life, size and firmness. Sweet cherry attributes were sweetness, flavor, firmness, shelf life, size and external color. Then, they sent surveys to people in three categories — packers, producers and consumers — asking them how much money they would spend to get the six different attributes in fruit. In August 2011, they sent out mail surveys for packers, or "market intermediaries," a category that included some marketing agencies and brokers. Forty of the 146 El recurso esencial, en español Presentamos en Español www.goodfruit.com/es