The Birds around here wont eat that *s-word.
Naturipe is run by a Highschool buddy. Good guy, and sharp as a hot fart in cheesecloth skivvies.
The "Other" is a consortium of MBG.
The Chilean fruit exists, because of your Tax dollars. Literally.
We paid for the fields to be cleared, planted, roads built, process lines, and sent our experts down there to do it all...
just to keep Mexifornia importers busy in the off season, and all with "War on drugs" funding.
Several of the bigger guys locally, keep their processing lines running year round, under contract with Naturipe, Driscols, Dole, and a couple others.
That is how we ended up with the invasive problems imported through mexifornia.
Keep an eyeball on the bottom of the cheater pints, quarts, and 4.4's when they come in, and keep them moving.
They keep the Alternaria and Anthracnose in check by soaking everything in the Captec before harvest and again in processing, then dropping temps to 30F.
Because of the sugars, the fruit wont freeze, and the fungus is stopped.
Get close to 40F, and the crud takes off like a wildfire.
In season, things should look like this.
Florida and Ga. are just a couple months out. Watch your butt on the south American stuff...they suck at keeping a handle on field quality, and process market prices are in the tank, so they will be squeezing hard on the fresh side, despite quality issues.
Come on up and pick a few in July, if you get a chance.
Would be good to have ya!