Developing the California fresh fig industry

The fig (Ficus carica), one of the first cultivated trees in the world, is grown in most of the of the worldRSQUOs moderate climates.
However, fresh figs are highly sensitive to physical damage, and susceptible to postharvest infections which cause high losses during marketing.
Preharvest orchard and postharvest conditions are important for improving fruit quality and postharvest life.
Reducing postharvest losses and developing global fresh fig marketing is a challenge for plant breeders, physiologists and postharvest scientists.
Our program focuses on increasing consumer consumption by identifying cultivars with high quality and suitable postharvest attributes, developing postharvest handling technologies, and improving marketing.
Our postharvest evaluations of consumer acceptance and the firmness and decay susceptibility of promising fresh figs in the National Clonal Germplasm Repository (NCGR) suggested a breeding program for developing firm fleshed cultivars with high consumer acceptance.

V International Symposium on Fig

C.H. Crisosto, L. Ferguson, J.E. Preece, T.J. Michailides, M.T. Haug, M. López Corrales , G.M. Crisosto

postharvest evaluations, consumer acceptance, losses, firmness, postharvest technologies, breeding programs

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2017.1173.49