Japanese Olympic Curling Team Caught Up in Familiar Strawberry Political Flap

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The recent strawberry industry earthquake around the Japanese Olympic curling team declaring (on camera no less) that the strawberries served by their South Korean hosts as a snack during the games were "surprisingly delicious" should sound pretty familiar to any California strawberry industry insider.

Full story in the Wall Street Journal:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-happens-when-you-accidentally-insult-a-strawberry-proud-nation-1521130541?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=1

The trouble with the Japanese Olympians being surprised at the great taste of the South Korean berries isn't that they aren't tasty and sweet, it is that many of the strawberries grown and consumed in South Korea actually have a lot of Japanese genetics in them. In the 1990's, two of the popular Japanese strawberry varieties - 'Red Pearl' and 'Akihime' - found their way into South Korea . Problem was that these two high yielding, great flavored varieties could only be grown under licensing agreement in Japan, while at the same time in South Korea there was no legal protection for them and subsequently these two were grown there far and wide. A treaty protecting foreign plant stock in South Korea was eventually signed in 2002, but since it was not in force until 2012, growers in South Korea had plenty of time to move the genetics of these two varieties into local hybrids.

How the Japanese curlers should know all of this information before complimenting the fruity snacks served by their host does not seem to have crossed anybodies mind.

The story has sort of a happy ending in that this past Tuesday, the Olympic curlers (and medalists it should be not forgotten) righted their error and sampled (on camera, again) a wide variety of Japanese strawberries - bred and grown in Japan - brought in for them by growers and shippers before a curling tournament in Aomori, Japan.

You just can't ever escape the politics of strawberries, no matter who you are or where you go.

The moment that rocked the Japanese strawberry industry - Olympic curler consuming a berry of Japanese genetics and thinking it was of South Korean heritage. Photo: Robert Cianflone/Getty Images.

'Sweet King' , one of the most well known strawberries in Japan. Average fruit size of 45 g makes it a contender with our early CA fruit.

Posted on Friday, March 16, 2018 at 12:34 PM

Comments: 2

Author: Mark Bolda

Comments:

I am in China at this moment for a conference. I have had opportunities to tase many of the Japanese varieties (including the white strawberries). I agree that the flavor of Japanese varieties being grown in China is very good. They are also very soft. It points to the difference between the systems of distribution in Asia and in Europe and the United States. I have noted that here in China, fruit reaches market the day after harvest. This allows breeders to concentrate on flavor over shipping. The European and American breeders must give priority to the fruit's ability to withstand four or five days in transit and then two or three additional days on the shelf of the grocery store. This hardiness seems to come at the expense of flavor. There was a UC variety in the late '60s and early '70s called Sequoia. It had flavor to rival anything I have tasted. It had size and produced well. However it did not ship well at all and so was fell out of use. The pendulum swung to the opposite end with Dr. Brinkhurst's first successful day-neutral, Selva. It was so hard that it's skin firmness tested similar to a ½" steel ball on the Rockwell Hardness V scale. Its flavor was the inverse of the hardness. American varieties are being used in China because of production potential. Japanese varieties are being used here because of flavor. I am not aware of the Japanese varieties being grown commercially in the United States - yet! When the white strawberries developed in Japan hit the US, I think they will rock the market.

Posted by Thom Flewell on March 18, 2018 at 5:54 PM

Interesting points here Tom. The US is such a large country with the biggest markets on the coast opposite of us, so one can see why there would be a tendency to look at shipping as part of the equation when breeding varieties(that said, some varieties of ours are pretty darn good!). Japan is a much smaller country with people everywhere, plus is super well networked by rail, some of it high speed. China on the other hand is as big as the US with about 4x the number of people, again massed on the coast, so it will be interesting to see what takes off with their varieties.

Reply by Mark Bolda on March 19, 2018 at 9:19 AM

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Japanese Olympic Curling Team Caught Up in Familiar Strawberry Political Flap

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