Sliced PEARS could give the pear industry a significant boost - Las PERAS en rodajas podrían dar un significativo impulso al sector

Source: http://www.goodfruit.com

Sliced apples account for 10% of the U.S. apple market. A Washington State University scientist believes sliced pears could give the pear industry a similar boost if technical challenges can be resolved. If the pear market could be expanded by 10 percent, by delivering high-quality sliced pears, that would translate to a $40 million positive impact on the pear industry, says Dr. Amit Dhingra, WSU geneticist. Importantly, it would increase the demand for small fruit, in the less-preferred 120 to 135 size range.

Challenges to supplying fresh sliced pears include difficulties of transporting a soft, ripened product; lack of consistency in ripening; and a short shelf life, which increases the risk for retailers or foodservice distributors who handle the product. If unripe pears are used, the slices remain hard and dry and are unlikely to result in repeat purchases, Dhingra said. However, Crunch Pak, a major supplier of fresh-sliced apples based in Cashmere, Washington, reports that juicy pears that have reached eating quality are not amenable to slicing, either, so pears need to be sliced while firm and ripened afterwards to develop good flavor and texture.

1-MCP (1-methylcyclopropene), which blocks ethylene perception in the fruit and prevents ripening, has been used on whole pears to maintain firmness and reduce scuffing and browning, but some treated fruit never softens and ripens. “The 1-MCP treated pear looks pristine,” Dhingra said. “It’s in suspended animation. It’s never going to ripen, but it looks good.” So, Dhingra and colleagues at WSU began doing research several years ago to find ways to reverse the effect of 1-MCP so that treated pears would eventually ripen. They identified nine ripening compounds, one of which is being patented by the university. “While we were testing whole fruit, we decided to test also some sliced pears,” Dhingra explained. They found that the ripening compound was effective on both sliced and whole fruit that had been treated with 1-MCP.

Proof of concept

That led to the idea of working with Crunch Pak to develop a sliced pear product. Last year, Dhingra obtained funding from the Fresh Pear Committee for proof-of-concept research. Crunch Pak sliced the pears for the experiments and WSU did the scientific analysis. The ripening compound is water soluble and can be applied at the same time as the non-browning treatment that Crunch Pak applies after fruit are sliced. In tests, 1-MCP-treated Bartlett pears were sliced at 17 pounds pressure, treated with the ripening compound, packaged in a four-ounce bag, and stored at 42.6°F for 21 days.

1-MCP-treated d’Anjou pears sliced and treated with the a proprietary ripening compound at 1%, 2% and 3% concentration by Crunch Pak. Note the browning of the slices at 3% concentration, indicating that the 1-MCP treated sliced fruit can be ripened by the ripening compound. As Crunch Pak does not yet produce sliced pears commercially, apple bags were used for the experiments. Courtesy WSU

Dhingra said the fruit developed good flavor, juiciness, and aroma, and outlasted the two weeks of shelf life required by retailers and food-service operators. Sliced fruit treated only with 1-MCP, and not the ripening compound, remained firm and crunchy with little to no flavor throughout the 21-day period.

“The concept of the sliced pear has to be a little different from a whole pear, which is supposed to be juicy and melting, because that kind of product is impossible to deliver in the bag,” Dhingra said. “We have to think of a sliced pear as a product that retains its integrity. It’s not soft, but it gives you the flavor, aroma, and juiciness. That’s what we’ve been able to accomplish with 1-MCP and the ripening compound.”

Crunch Pak provided some of the sliced pear samples to Walmart and believes there is good potential demand for the product. Another experiment that Dhingra conducted in collaboration with WSU food scientist Dr. Carolyn Ross, showed that the ripening compound can also be used to enhance the quality of pears not treated with 1-MCP.

In the experiment, untreated d’Anjou pears were sliced at a pressure of 15 pounds and treated with the ripening compound. Consumers were asked to evaluate the slices during the Washington State Horticultural Association’s annual conference last December. Although the quality of the pears was variable before slicing, the ripening treatment enhanced the overall acceptance, flavor, and texture of the slices.

More trials

Encouraged by their results so far, WSU and Crunch Pak will do further trials in the coming season with almost $70,000 in funding from the Fresh Pear Committee. One of the goals: find out how much of the ripening compound to apply, based on the initial firmness and physiology of the pear. At high doses, the slices ripen rapidly and the edges of the slices turn slightly brown. WSU will purchase two pieces of equipment to measure ethylene and carbon dioxide levels, one of which is a hand-held device that can monitor ripening fruit in the bag without needing to break the bag open, so the same slices can be monitored over time.

Ross will conduct more tastings to assess consumer acceptance, and WSU agricultural economist Dr. Karina Gallardo will do studies to find out what consumers would be willing to pay for sliced pears and to estimate the potential increase in per-capita pear consumption. Dhingra expects the product will appeal to young people who value convenience but might not find it feasible to eat whole fruit on the go. “I think we have an opportunity now with a sliced product in pears to increase consumption.”

Fuente: Geraldine Warner (http://www.goodfruit.com)

Innovate, add value and attract consumers: three simple and original high-impact strategies to sell more and promote the consumption of vegetables - Innovar, agregar valor y atraer al consumidor: tres estrategias simples y originales de alto impacto para vender más y promover el consumo de verduras

The G's unwashed salad brand fresh & naked, whose traditional staples of baby salad leaves, including a new variety of baby kale, has just undergone a re-brand, the focus of which was to keep it simple, and use strong colours to differentiate the products.

Fresh & naked has been on the market since 2010, "We launched the brand in cardboard boxes which was iconic and very successful but difficult operationally and did not deliver the optimum customer experience that we wanted, so we migrated the product into paper-laminate bags in autumn of that year once the brand was established," explained Anthony Gardiner, Marketing Director at G's Fresh. "The bags made it easier to pack and were better for the shelf-life of the product. In 2013 they were updated for a trendier look, then again this May. The latest re-branding exercise was to make the bags eye-catching but simple; you can also see more of the product. The strong colours to identify the different varieties are still there, and of course the paper laminate bags which is synonyms with our brand."

One of the key features which makes the brand stand apart from other fresh cut products is that the leaves are unwashed, meaning no MAP or washing in chlorine; it also gives circa two days more shelf-life to certain products as the dry leaves keep longer.

There are five products under the fresh & naked brand, rocket, lamb's lettuce, the BIG mix (spinach, chard and rocket), super spinach and new this summer is baby kale. Anthony explains that having just 5 main lines has allowed them to drive focus and efficiency.
 
Less information overload on packaging seems to be a good thing for the fresh & naked brand. “You’ll see for example with our baby kale, which we believe will be bought by the more health conscious consumer, we’ve decided to make all of our back of pack nutritional information much bigger,” says Anthony.

These days the promotion of products has changed. Traditionally it would be on TV but fresh & naked posters are now in underground stations throughout London. The brand has been active on social media for a while now, as well as placing ads in foodie magazines. The brand enjoys national UK distribution, but the latest advertising campaign is concentrated in central London as that is where the bulk of our core customer sales are located.



What drives sales and brand loyalty for Anthony is consistency of the product and living up to the promise of fresh picked produce. “The more consistent you can make your product the better. With fresh grown produce it’s much more of a challenge because you haven’t got that consistency or control that you do with a manufactured brand.” 
 
As a major grower of produce for the UK and Europe, G’s Fresh employs the most advanced technology and processes. “We give programs to all our suppliers and it is mandatory that they adhere to our technical supplier standards. We will also audit them for compliance. That’s how we control it,” says Gardiner. “Once we get the product into the factory we have some very sophisticated x-ray technology, which is very advanced and can pick up foreign bodies which shouldn't be there, such as stones etc. The technology keeps evolving.”
 
According to Anthony, consumers in the UK are not that interested in getting to know the grower any more, “When I moved into the fresh produce industry seven years ago there was a lot of photos of the grower and their story, but we did a lot of research and found that it was enough for consumers to know that it was British, or that it was from East Anglia. People tend to trust a brand."
 
Fresh, natural and convenient is what the consumer wants from G’s, according to Gardiner. “We’re well placed, we’ve got some unique products which are well focused, on trend and we’ve got some really good PR going as well.” 



Pre-packaged, flavour infused and value added fresh beetroot products is a another of G's specialities. It is marketed under the brand 'Love Beets' and is an area where there is definitely room for growth, according to Anthony. “Brand View said the number of retail lines using beetroot had gone up 20% year on year. Sales of fresh prepared beetroot have gone from 30 million GBP to 50 million in the past 8 years,” he says.
 
Research on the health benefits of the newly labelled 'superfood' has also ramped up. "Universities are always looking at health benefits of different products. Beetroot juice and vegetable juice is still an alien concept in the UK, but not so in the US. Over there it’s already a massive category. We’re really well positioned for when the trend reaches a mainstream position here.”
Source: http://www.hortidaily.com