Saturday, February 21, 2009

How do I get in on this racket?

Apparently a Japanese grower is raking in big bucks for gigantic strawberries:

Berries, $841 apiece (Rockhampton Morning Bulletin)

Now, granted, it's 841 Australian dollars...that's only US$540. But still...

80 grams seems like a big strawberry, but I've seen several selections that averaged close to fifty, so I don't think it would be hard to get a variety with primary fruits of 80 grams, and at $841 apiece, one could afford to harvest the primaries and pitch the rest.

The statement about fructose is, in my opinion, off base, though. Although there is a relationship between size and sweetness, it's not a terribly strong one. Plus, fructose is not the only sugar in strawberries--in fact sucrose generally accounts for around half of the sugars, and glucose is important as well.