IN THE NAME OF THE MOST COMPASSIONATE

Title of paper:

Japanese Pomological Magic:Producing Fruits for Gifts

By: Samaneh Raheb

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About Japan

Japan is an island nation composed of four main islands (Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyusyu) and many smaller ones including Okinawa as a part of Ryukyu Islands.

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What kind of Fruits are cultured in Japan?

tropical fruits such as mango in Okinawa totemperate fruit crops preferring cool climatesuch as apple and cherry in the northern parts

of Honshu.

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Figure 1. Map of Japan showing prefectures and amounts of Satsuma mandarin and apple production in 2007.

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The value of production from primary industries

(agriculture, forestry, and fisheries) in Japan was

US$ 106.5 billion in 2006 of which agriculture

accounts for 80% (Fig. 2A).

Fruit production accounts for 9% of agricultural value (Fig. 2B).

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In 2005, total fruit production was 3.5 million tonnes; the leading fruit crop was Satsuma mandarin followed by apple, Japanese pear, persimmon, grape, and peach (Fig. 3).

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What is the characteristics of fruit culture in Japan ?

the scale of each orchard is very small; 81% of fruit farms are less than 1.0 hectare but extremely intensive. The land area of Japan is about 378 thousand km2 but due to the many mountains only 11% is arable.

Many western people visiting Japan are amazed by the beautiful fruits in department store or specialty fruit shops and shocked at their high prices (Fig. 4).

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In Japan, in contrast to the West, fruits are prized as gifts, rather than considered merely as a refreshing snack. The Japanese people consider fruits more as a table luxury rather than as food.

Fruit farmers found fruit very profitable if they could provide a high quality product, since fruits were often used as a gift, especially relevant to older or sick persons. However, fruits to be appropriate as a gift had to be of excellent quality and appearance –beautiful, large, and without blemish or imperfections.

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Fruit farmers have developed several unique cultivation techniques to produce this special product:

1- Thinning

2- Bagging

3- Leaf Pruning and Apple Turning

4- Mulching

5- Greenhouse Culture

6- Grading

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Chemical thinning

insecticide Sevin for

apple

ammonium thiosulfate (ATS) for peach

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Japanese fruit farmers never use these chemicals for thinning. Rather, they perform

flower and/or fruit thinning by hand.

for producing large fruits

and to adjust fruit load correctly to produce good quality fruits and to avoid

biennial bearing.

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hand thinning is

tedious and

timeconsuming

• to select good fruits• balance fruit load at

each bearing branch.

Thinning is most effective if it is performed early, so flower thinning is much more effective than fruit thinning.

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When is thinning performed in apple , pear and peach?

Flower thinning of apple and

Japanese pear is commonly

performed after artificial pollination.

Flower bud thinning is sometimes

carried out in peach during winter

or before bud break in spring (Fig. 5).

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Thinning in Grape

In grape, berry thinning is carried out with special scissors to produce large berries (Fig. 6); since Japanese consumers prefer large individual berries (>10 g) from tetraploid cultivars such as ‘Kyoho ’ and ‘Pione’.

The production of seedless

berries from these tetraploid

cultivars is also commonly induced by

treatment with gibberellic acid (GA3).

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GA3 is applied twice to each individual cluster by hand dipping

in solutions of GA3

first just after full bloom

then 10 to 15 days after full

bloom

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What are the Bags made of?

Bags are usually made of paraffin-coated paper with several colors and thickness.

What is the role of bag in pear?

the cultivation of the Japanese pear ‘Nijisseiki’, one of the most important cultivars, fruits were bagged twice during their growing season to prevent black spot caused by Alternaria alternata. Fruit was first bagged with a small bag at an early growing stage just after fruit thinning was finished, and then rebagged over the small bag at a later growing stage but before the first small bag was torn by fruit enlargement.

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What can do we to save labor?

However, to save labor, new cultivars showing disease and/or insect resistance with good qualities of the fruit are being introduced. Examples include ‘Gold Nijisseiki’ Japanese pear, a mutant that is resistant to black spot disease, induced by gamma rays to ‘Nijisseiki’ by the Institute of Radiation Breeding, Japan.

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What is the aim of bagging in apple? Describe it.

In apple, bagging is applied to induce a fully bright red

peel color based on anthocyanin pigmentation without the presence of chlorophyll. Usually, a double-layered bag is applied to red apples; an inner translucent bag without a bottom made of blue, red, or green wax paper and an outer

bag colored black on the inside with an enclosed bottom (Fig. 9B).

What time is bagging perfomed in apple?

Bagging is performed 4-6 weeks after petal fall and removed 4-6 weeks before harvest. Only the outer bag is removed at first as the inner bag protects against sunburn; 3-7 days later the inner bag is removed. When the inner bag is removed, the fruit skin does not contain chlorophyll due to blocking of sunlight by the black opaque color of the bag (Fig. 9C). This improves the red coloration because the anthocyanin coloration is induced on an almost white skin.

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What is the happen if apple grows without bagging?

If fruit skin has chlorophyll on the surface without bagging,

red coloration appears dull by the mixing of red and greenish color.

The bagging of apple fruit also prevents russetting of the fruit skin.

Attention: since bagging tends to reduce sugar content of the fruit, and is an extremely time consuming practice with very high labor cost

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What is the purpose of Leaf Pruning and Apple Turning?

In addition to bagging, there are other special cultural practices for improving apple color. In order to make color uniform on the skin, the leaves around the fruit are removed by hand to expose the fruit to sunlight uniformly (Fig. 10).

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The “tama-mawashi” requires gentle turning of the fruit so it does not drop.

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What is the mulching?Water-permeable plastic film having the property of transporting water vapor unilaterally from the ground to the air but not from the air to the ground, is now applied as a material for mulching of citrus in Japan (Fig. 12A).

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What are the advantages of mulching?

1- This cultivation technique prevents rain entry into ground around the tree and restricts water supply to the tree by rainfall, which ensures to produce high quality fruit with high sugar content.

2- In addition, a silver sheet is sometimes used for mulching of several fruit crops such as mandarin, apple, and persimmon for improving fruit coloration by reflecting sunlight, as well as

for enhancing sugar content by preventing rainfall on the ground (Fig. 12B).

3- Silver sheet mulch has also been shown to be effective for evading some fruit insects.

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Greenhouse Culture

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What is the rain shelter?

1- Rain shelter covering the top of the growing tree can avoid rain damage as well as improve fruit quality by increasing sugar content.

2- Rain shelters are important for sweet cherry cultivation (Fig. 15) to prevent fruit cracking by reducing high moisture content around the fruit.

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Heated plastic houses

Fruit growing in heated plastic houses is increasing in area in Japan.

In 2001, heated greenhouses for grape reached 4,056 ha, Satsuma mandarin was 1,276 ha, Japanese pear was 451 ha, and sweet cherry was 303 ha. There was also small production of other fruits such as loquat, fig, and persimmon in heated plastic houses.

Heated greenhouses permit growers to harvest the fruit very early in the season with excellent fruit quality.

However, production in glasshouse is not expanding due to high initial costs.

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How is the mango and Apricot harvested?

In greenhouse mango cultivation, fruit drops at full ripeness, but is caught in special nets (Fig. 16). The fully ripe fruit is delivered immediately to the special market after packing it in a beautiful box. Each fruit packed in a beautiful special box will be sold at 2,000- 5,000 yen each (US$ 21 to 52).

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Japanese apricot (Prunus mume) is also sometimes harvested by catching dropped tree-

ripened fruit onto a large net on the ground; this product is used to make a pecial pickled

product (salted ume).

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Grading

In Japan, a non-destructive quality evaluation system is widely used for many kinds of fruits.

This system enables grading, according to color, defect, shape and size, using a chargecoupled device (CCD) color camera, as well as sugar content using near-infrared spectroscopy (Fig. 17).

In some citrus growing areas, this system has greatly improved quality uniformity and has increased the area’s reputation in the marketplace.

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CONCLUSION

Fruit culture in Japan is unique in the world of horticulture. It is renowned for producing fruits of outstanding appearance and high quality attuned for the gift market that has traditional cultural significance in Japan.

There are exceptional growers that have developed special growing techniques and are leaders in fruit production in their growing areas.

We suggest that many of these practices could influence fruit culture all over the world.

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Best Wishes