BALA_TINGANG BILL_SULLIVAN BOB_BORS CHRIS_ROLLINS DAVID_SUZUKI FLORA_CARRANZA HAMISH_GRAHAM JUAN_FERNANDO_AGUILAR LEITH_ZAIGER MAN_WITH_HAT MARG_SULLIVAN MAURICE_KONG NARRATOR NORIS_LEDESMA RICHARD_CAMPBELL RICHAR_CAMPBELL RICK_NAHMIAS SHEEHAN_GOBIN STEVEN_BRADY WOMAN_1 MAN WITH HAT The flavors from the tropical fruits just are more varied than any other food that we eat. NARRATOR Fruit was once valuable and rare, but it’s become a commodity on a mass scale. The fruit we eat, like the banana, is bred with efficiency in mind. The one variety we buy is designed to be produced all year round, travel huge distances, and stand-out in supermarkets. It’s a formula that’s ripe for profit and disaster. Because bananas as we know them could be gone in just a few years. But there are those who believe that the solution can be found in the diversity of the fruit world. That the answer is more : more fruit and more variety. Hope may lie with this international network of cultivators and obsessives. The Fruit Hunters. DAVID SUZUKI The banana is one of the world’s most popular fruits. But the original banana was not the soft fruit we love. Today, almost all of bananas in or stores are Cavendishes. They genetically identical. And that’s a problem. For Fruit Hunters, the solution lies in the wild not in laboratory. STEVEN BRADY I’ve tried to plant my place so that there is something in flower, something edibly fruiting, 365 days out of the year. I really had that need for a garden of eden. It’s been that way ever since I was a kid. This whole idea that you could just walk out the door and grab some fruit off of the tree and just sit down and stuff that into your face, is just something I have to have. NARRATOR In Borneo, you don’t have to look far to find a unique fruit paradise. Borneo’s rainforests are some of the oldest and most biologically diverse in the world. There are more species of fruit found here than anywhere else. It’s a genetic oasis, a treasure trove of fruit. Deep in these rainforests live the Penan, one of the world's few remaining nomadic tribes. Bala Tingang is a Penan elder. He has a deep knowledge of the forest’s fruit species and their many uses. BALA TINGANG These are the kind of fruits the Penan have been eating for generations past. We Penan live in this forest. The fruits that we eat are durian fruit, bela fruit, tungen fruit, jet fruit, nakan fruit, tujai fruit… Once they disappear, how will the Penan survive ? This tekalet fruit is eaten by the wild boar. We Penan need them in our forest. When the fruits are gone, the animals won't come, and we wouldn't find them when we go hunting. These are the many types of fruit we eat from the forest. NARRATOR The home of the Penan is under threat. More than half of Borneo’s rainforests have been logged over the past 50 years. Their incredible diversity is being bulldozed to grow a single crop the fruit of the palm tree, used for fuel, cooking, and cosmetics. And the historically nomadic Penan people are being forced to settle in villages. This is a disaster! How can this not be seen as a disaster? All these forests, all these mountains... Destroyed. No fruits survived. No leaves survived. How will the animals remain here? How can they reproduce when all the forests are gone? Do they want to do away with the Penan? NARRATOR Borneo might be an extreme example, but fruit diversity around the world is being destroyed by industrial farming. The results are on display in the fruit aisle of your local supermarket… Today, we have access to more fruits than at any other time in human history. It’s a truly remarkable achievement. Once only kings and queens could eat exotic fruit. Now everyone can walk into a supermarket and buy a kiwi, but their availability comes with a price : a distinct lack of choice. Most of the fruit we eat is grown through grafting, a process which allows the farmer to reproduce any fruit exactly, by attaching its branches to a durable root stock, or tree. It’s an ancient technique that ensures perfect consistency, but has led to the farming and selling of single varieties. However in local markets and bazaars around the world, the fruit on display is infinitely more varied and unpredictable. At fruit stalls you can taste wild flavors and textures you’ll never find in the supermarket. With such variety you’ll never eat the same fruit twice. CHRIS ROLLINS Jack fruits are the biggest fruit you can eat that grows on a tree. It’s kind of like banana, cantaloupe and juicy fruit chewing gum mixed together. But you know, this is apple pie, this is everyday food to people who live in that tropical belt from India to the Philippines. Millions and millions and millions of people eat this every single day. NARRATOR But even more people eat the common banana. Over one hundred billion bananas are consumed every year. It’s one of the oldest mass-marketed tropical fruits and the fourth agricultural product in the world next to wheat, rice, and corn. Tasty, cheap to produce and packed with nutrients, the banana is, in many ways, the perfect fruit. You wouldn’t want to take a bite out of a wild banana it’s full of teeth-shattering seeds. But over generations, we bred them from their rough natural state to be silky and sweet. And also seedless, which meant we had to grow them from transplanted shoots. Once we had that perfect banana, we created a worldwide industry around that one variety. And since the 19th Century, bananas have been grown on huge industrial plantations in tropical countries. The journey from plantation to table is a global feat. They’re packaged, inspected, ripened and sent on voyages of thousands of kilometers. This industrial chain provides the world with a consistent supply of nutritious, affordable bananas. But this very model could be its downfall. Juan Fernando Aguilar is the head banana breeder for the Honduran Foundation for Agricultural Research. He’s dedicated his life to saving the banana. JUAN FERNANDO AGUILAR When I was five years old, I became interested in plants. Because I really loved bananas and I wanted to have a banana tree in our home. I took a banana from my mom's fruit basket, and I planted it directly into the ground. I waited fifteen days… to see if a banana tree would grow. Well, But that banana tree never grew. My grandfather and uncle gave me lots of seeds to plant. They taught me how to properly plant things. And how to take care of them. Over time the banana tree grew at home. After that, I dedicated myself to agriculture. NARRATOR The banana you buy in supermarkets is known as the Cavendish variety. It can last more than fifteen days after being picked before ripening. JUAN FERNANDO AGUILAR The Cavendish is the only variety of export bananas planted in the whole world. This is called monoculture. It is a very dangerous practice in agriculture. NARRATOR The perfect industrial fruit the Cavendish banana is exported and sold around the world. But we used to eat a different banana. In the 1800s, exporters found one seemingly perfect variety, the Gros Michel. With a delicious flavor and long shelf life, it conquered the globe and built empires. But in the 1920s a deadly fungus called Panama disease began to strike Gros Michel plantations. By the 1960s, the world’s banana crops were almost completely wiped out. Growers turned to the Cavendish, a lesser-known variety that could resist the fungus. But now the Cavendish is in big trouble. JUAN FERNANDO AGUILAR This banana we like so much is susceptible to a new disease Panama Disease Race Four. If this disease starts in hits Costa Rica or Honduras... It will have a big impact. NARRATOR Experts believe having already devastated Cavendish crops in Asia and Australia, that Panama disease will soon hit the fields of South America, the world’s largest exporter of bananas. JUAN FERNANDO AGUILAR I can develop new varieties. A hybrid resistant to Panama Disease. That’s our mission. NARRATOR Finding the perfect fruit, for love or money, has always been a preoccupation that has driven Fruit Hunters to travel the globe. During the age of exploration, the discovery of a new fruit was often a prized possession, becoming a valued commodity when explorers brought it back. By the end of the 19th century, a worldwide fruit race had begun. Large nations sent their botanists to scour the world and bring home whatever new, exciting, and viable crops they could find. David Fairchild was a plant explorer for the US Department of Agriculture. In his travels he introduced over two thousand new plants to the US. Without him, few of us would be familiar with cherries, nectarines, or mangoes. The legacy of David Fairchild lives on today through Noris Ledesma and Richard Campbell. NORIS LEDESMA Look at the avocadoes! NARRATOR Horticulturalists and professional fruit hunters. NORIS LEDESMA Hello! NARRATOR Richard and Noris travel the world searching for rare fruits. RICHARD CAMPBELL Is this your typical size ? NORIS LEDESMA Did you grow this fruit ? NARRATOR Working like detectives, they trace the fruit back to the trees where it originated. RICHARD CAMPBELL I like it cause of the acidity. In terms of a western pallet, often times, we like a fruit with more acidity. That’s very common for us. NORIS LEDESMA It has a lot of potential in my opinion. NARRATOR When they find a tree with potential, they take cuttings back home to Miami, where they graft them to existing trees and wait for them to bear fruit. The Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, is one of the largest tropical plant collections in the world. It’s a safehouse for diversity. Richard and Noris are the curators of tropical fruit at Fairchild. Here they nurture over 1000 varieties of fruit, including more than 600 types of mangoes. RICHARD CAMPBELL I think the diversity is important because you always have to be ready for the next plague. As an agricultural industry, lack of diversity means eventual death. You have to be genetically diverse in order to survive all of the challenges that come. Why I’ve been so blessed is I’m able to work on things that I truly love. I don’t like Lychees, for instance. Lychees are cold, they don’t respond, they don’t do what I want them to do. But a Mango is always a negotiation it’s a love story. That’s enough Noris. NORIS LEDESMA Let me get one more. RICHARD CAMPBELL The flavors? I mean the sky is the limit. You can go from mild to bold… scary to intimidating, to submissive. By the time you get done with all that you’re just exhausted, okay. It’s exhausting to love a mango. NORIS LEDESMA Mango I believe is the king of the fruits. It’s a fruit that bring passion and that bring all your senses together. Make a little nick here and then smell it. Good? RICHAR CAMPBELL You can buy four to five varieties of mangoes in a grocery store. Mangoes are classified as red, green and yellow, okay. Well that’s ridiculous. There’s thousands of varieties of mangoes and we should all be identifying them by variety, not by red, green and yellow. NARRATOR While Richard and Noris work to protect diversity, in Honduras, Juan Aguilar is trying to save the world's most popular banana from extinction. Back in Honduras, Juan and his team strive to create a hybrid banana that is resistant to the Panama disease. JUAN FERNANDO AGUILAR Is it yours? Don't lose it. C'mon, let's go get the pollen. NARRATOR Banana breeding begins early in the morning. At the crack of dawn, Juan and his team collect pollen from banana plants that have desirable characteristics. JUAN FERNANDO AGUILAR The best time to pollinate is the same as when it is done naturally. Bees start collecting pollen at 5 am. They fly in search of receptive females. So we do the same as the bees. Let's get some pollen over there. NARRATOR The pollen is used to fertilize receptive banana plants that could eventually produce a Cavendish replacement. JUAN FERNANDO AGUILAR We are specialists in breeding. That's our work. NARRATOR Juan is selectively breeding plants with desirable flavors and aromas, but also resistant to disease. JUAN FERNANDO AGUILAR It is really important to pollinate with enough love. It is like when you make love with your wife, your girlfriend. There has to be romance, an atmosphere... before the sexual act... because this allows the woman time to be receptive. NARRATOR After months of anticipation, Juan harvests the bunches in the hope that some may have produced viable seeds. JUAN FERNANDO AGUILAR These breeds are highly infertile. That's why you don't find any seeds in the fruit you eat. But if these fruits are well-fertilized while in bloom. We can obtain one seed in every five hundred Cavendish clusters. It's a little bit difficult but it's possible. NARRATOR Finding a seed is a mammoth effort. Local workers peel and pulverize over a hundred thousand bananas a week in search of them. On average, they’ll only find one tiny seed in every thousand bunches. WOMAN 1 That one over there has a seed. JUAN FERNANDO AGUILAR This seed looks good. WOMAN 1 Yes. NARRATOR It was once widely believed that Cavendish bananas were completely infertile. They were grown by taking a cutting from a mature plant. Among the world’s banana breeders, only Juan has been able to coax a seed out of the Cavendish. JUAN FERNANDO AGUILAR The first time I had a Cavendish seed on my hands, I asked everyone to handle it as if it were gold or diamonds. The banana seed does not bear a plant easily. We need to help them. First they cut open the seed to expose the banana embryo. Then they carefully remove it and place it in a test tube. There, it grows for three months before it can be transplanted to the greenhouse. Here is the developed plant. These plants are very important because they are hybrids of Cavendish. This one is not so good. It has a little fungus that is eating it. NARRATOR One of these shoots may one day be a replacement for the Cavendish. Only the strongest are grown to maturity in the fields. JUAN FERNANDO AGUILAR After seven years of work we've got the first hybrids that could be replacements for the Cavendish. NARRATOR For the first time, new varieties of bananas that retain the same texture, aroma and flavor of the Cavendish can be produced. JUAN FERNANDO AGUILAR I think the solution is not to have only one replacement for the Cavendish. There can be four, five or six varieties. NARRATOR Juan may have found a variety that can match the Cavendish’s flavor, but it will take years before he knows if it’s resistant to Panama disease. If he succeeds, Juan may bring back diversity to the banana industry. He’ll have taken the banana we know and improved it. And there are other Fruit Hunters whose lives are dedicated to breeding entirely new and surprising fruit for us to taste... Despite the fruit world’s vast diversity, the modern supermarket stocks only the varieties that are easiest to produce and transport. And in recent years, diversity in our fruit aisles has come not from the fields, but has been increasingly manufactured in factories and labs. The mutation that gives certain grapefruit varieties, like the Rio Red, their vivid-color originally came from an experimental dose of radiation. Another method to improve or create new fruits involves inserting genetic material from other species. The Flavor Savor tomato is genetically engineered to ripen more slowly than conventional varieties. The Arctic Apple is designed not to turn brown after it’s cut open. Fruit is gradually becoming just another processed food. But some fruit growers reject manufactured fruits, and, like Juan, use time-tested cultivation techniques to bring variety to the mass market. LEITH ZAIGER Our family has dedicated ourselves to improving the fruit industry worldwide. We’ve always worked together as a family, as soon as we were big enough to help make cuttings, transplant trees, we all worked together. NARRATOR The Zaiger family has spent four decades cultivating new varieties of fruit. In that time they’ve bred hundreds of juicy creations, many of which you can buy today. LEITH ZAIGER The goal is to have delicious fruits that have all the characteristics necessary to get it from the farm to the market. In the very beginning, it just had to be bigger, redder and firmer. But now, those qualities are still very important, but flavor has become the most important characteristic. NARRATOR In the 1990s, Zaiger developed their signature hybrid : the Pluot. It's three-quarters Japanese plum and one quarter apricot. LEITH ZAIGER They still resemble plums. What we’ve done is really improve the flavor. NARRATOR Other Zaiger hybrids include plumcots and apriums. Zaiger's varieties aren’t created through genetic modification, nor are their vivid flavours artificially enhanced. Instead, they use an ancient method of cultivation what they call “playing the bee.” Workers cross pollinate different species of flowering plants to create new varieties. FLORA CARRANZA My name is Flora Carranza and we’re pollinating trees. We emasculate the flowers. We take all the petals and anthers out of the flower, leave the pistil. We come back and pollinate the pistil. I’ve been doing this since 1968. We leave the female part of the flower and we bring the pollen from another bottle and we put the pollen in the pistil… It’s like making the pistil pregnant. I’m making babies, in other words ! That’s what I’m doing ! I’m doing the bees job. LEITH ZAIGER Everything has a long range goal and we hope to be around when we hit the goals on many of those selections. When each generation is approximately four to five years, and it takes seven or eight generations, that’s a long time. NARRATOR The Zaigers are always looking for the next new fruit variety. Now, they’re working on a cherry with a long growing season that can thrive in cold climates. But their goals are long-term. It may take years before they have a final product ready. While the Zaigers spend decades working with known fruits, there are others who look for unfamiliar treasures with market potential. And the next big one might just come from a Canadian Fruit Hunter. Bob Bors is the head of the fruit-breeding program at the University of Saskatchewan. His challenge is to find new fruits with commercial potential. BOB BORS Well, I got into horticulture at an early age, mostly growing tomatoes and cucumbers. When I graduated from the University, I landed a job with two fruit researchers, one that was working with tree fruits and canopies, and what not. And the other one was a raspberry breader. And I could not believe that I was getting paid to eat raspberries all day long for probably a few weeks every year. I thought raspberries were just one thing, but really, they were hundreds of things. NARRATOR While cultivating the university’s fields, Bors noticed an odd-shaped, purplish berry - the haskap. BOB BORS I first started getting excited about Hascap in early June of 2000. We have this hodge-podge row of like five of this, five of that, that we just… Something we don’t know about we just plant a little bit and see if it will live in Saskatchewan. I looked down there and it was early June and it was ripening already. That’s pretty incredible. So I really became curious after seeing and tasting it. NARRATOR Several years ago, Bors traveled through northern Canada’s boreal forests and wetlands, where he encountered many varieties of the wild haskap berry. They seemed to thrive in the cold northern climate. He discovered that a combination of two common varieties yielded a tasty result. BOB BORS The one type of haskap was really kind of sweet but boring and the other hascap was more flavorful, but tart. A little too tart. Out of curiosity, I hybridized the two just to see what would happen. And putting them together we kind of got a blending of the two, almost exact things, if I’d taken the two parents and put them in a blender together. I usually say it’s most like raspberry with a little blueberry. But it also has something else. I often say, it’s like a little zing or a little bit of tang, it’s probably the vitamin C content. Part of our mission is to figure out how to grow this well. But we work with a lot of growers and maybe they’ll figure it out before we do. NARRATOR Hamish Graham is a Saskatchewan farmer who hopes to lead the charge to create a homegrown haskap industry. HAMISH GRAHAM Yeah, in any kind of new industry somebody’s gotta step to the fore and try and figure out how to take it from the backyard garden to get the agronomics of the thing worked out… And I love a challenge. Hi Marg! Hi Bill! NARRATOR Hamish works with Marg and Bill Sullivan from the Haskap Canada Association. HAMISH GRAHAM That’s borealis here. MARG SULLIVAN Bob Bors said, ‘I’ve got this thing. You’ll like this. It grows anywhere. It’s suited to Saskatchewan, it likes cold weather, it loves this type of climate.’ And so we said, ‘Sure, we’ll give it a whirl.’ NARRATOR Growers in Canada hope that the haskap might become a breakout fruit sensation the next kiwi. They look to Japan, where a large market already exists for haskaps. There, the fruit is popular for both its taste and the health benefits of its high levels of vitamin c. and antioxidants. Japanese producers can’t keep up with the demand for the fruit. BILL SULLIVAN Marg and I first met with the Japanese in 2000 and they make everything out of haskap. It’s very healthy, they’ve known that for years, and they… anything you can eat or drink they make from it. NARRATOR The haskap is almost unknown outside of Japan. Hamish and his fellow growers aim to prime the North American market by introducing products like haskap wines, preserves and honey. They hope to make it an international sensation just like the goji berry. BOB BORS Fun things about working with hascap is you really feel like you’re a pioneer doing something. A lot of grocery stores carry the one variety that’s the standard. It’s like eating a bag of potato chips, where everything is the same, you know, you get used to it. I would love to see the grocery store of the future to embrace diversity. You would buy, not one variety in a container, but many different kinds. NARRATOR Bob’s not alone. Fruit Hunters around the world are taking the adventuresome path, while others are looking in their backyards, to find and share diversity with the rest of us. Being a fruit hunter doesn’t mean having to travel to faraway places. Fruit hunters can find gold in their own backyards. RICK NAHMIAS I’d be walking the dog, who’s getting progressively older, and walks a lot slower, I got really… I noticed, ‘Look. ‘We’ve got walnuts here and pecans there, and tangerines, and then you just see piles of it, every season. NARRATOR Rick Nahmias is the founder of Food Forward, a non-profit organization that gleans urban fruit trees and donates their harvest to local food aid groups. RICK NAHMIAS My friend just a block and half from here opened her yard to me just to have an experiment with her tangerines. Over three weeks, we got 800lbs of citrus from just one backyard. So we started just with pantries and now we’re doing women’s shelters and boys and girls clubs and homebound meals for people with aids. Every week we’re getting a new applicant for food from us. NARRATOR Food Forward harvests fruit from hundreds of properties. Some of these trees have been here for decades and have adapted to local conditions. RICK NAHMIAS We’re taking fifty and hundred year old trees that are still giving us fruit every year. We’re not… Wow, these are trees that don’t have to be watered. I mean, a perfect example. Just a few months ago I was in studio city and this guy had a grapefruit tree the size of this walnut tree… 40 year old tree, he’s never watered it. He just bought the house with the tree there. 1300lbs of grapefruit, primo oro blanco’s came off this one tree, in about an hour and a half. Not a drop of water. NARRATOR Food Forward is not alone. There’s a growing movement in North America with similar organizations popping up in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Back in Honduras, Juan hasn’t given up on the daunting task of finding a new banana. JUAN FERNANDO AGUILAR We need ten years to develop a new hybrid. I estimate that my work will never end. This means that we won't leave the world with one variety. We're going to create a new era in the production of Cavendish. So that is the work. It is work that requires a lot of observation. Work for which you always need to have a hope. Always remain hopeful. NARRATOR With Juan’s patience and dedication there is hope for the future of the banana. The possibility for achieving variety is endless. At the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, Noris Ledesma and Richard Campbell harvest a colorful crop of mangoes from their collection. They’re preparing for an event dedicated to the very idea of diversity. RICHARD CAMPBELL One more, or you got enough? One more? NORIS LEDESMA Two more, I think. RICHARD CAMPBELL Two more! You’re greedy! You’re greedy ! NARRATOR The Fairchild’s annual mango festival takes place every July. Thousands of people come from around the world to celebrate the so-called “King of Fruits.” That’s not a bad price. They can taste from the Farm’s huge collection and buy their own mango plants to grow at home. Richard and Noris are able to reach out and share their diverse collection with the world. Together with volunteers, they teach people about the fruit. These came… We have these on agreement with the Israeli government. RICHARD CAMPBELL We’re gonna cut up Noris’ favorite. NORIS LEDESMA It’s called Ruby. Fairchild Ruby. And, it has a flavour that I really like, it’s very spicy! NARRATOR They advise professional growers about the varieties they’ve collected from around the world. With luck some of these mangoes might end up on supermarket shelves one day. Other fruit hunters, like Chris Rollins, also share their knowledge with like-minded enthusiasts. CHRIS ROLLINS Well I grew up here in Miami and I grew up eating mangoes, what are in this neighborhood, common fruits. They had a couple of folks there that were members of an organization called the rare fruit council and they kept bugging me, “Ah, come to the meetings, come to the meetings!” It was an incredible group of people from all over the world living here in Miami growing tropical fruits in their farms and gardens. That’s not an easy thing to grasp. NARRATOR Members of the Rare Fruit Council International meet regularly to show off their fruit and share their trade secrets. MAURICE KONG The thing about fruit collecting is that there’s no end. There’s always something new to learn. I have to show you the ones I have growing. One of the fruits that has won many tasting contests is the ice cream mango from Tobago. I also introduced some mango varieties from Burma. If it becomes prolific here then will introduce it to organizations such as the rare fruit council in Miami, members will grow it and they in turn will introduce it to nurseries and then the nurseries will introduce it to the public. SHEEHAN GOBIN I like finding the rarest stuff, improved varieties, stuff that no one else has in Florida. It’s about sharing. I collect and give away to whoever; family, friends. One hurricane, one disease, now that tree has been lost to anyone. If you don’t make the material accessible, it’s gone and what’s the point of doing all the collecting. That’s why, I share with the nurseries, I share with my friends, share with my family, to get the material out there. NARRATOR We live in the age of a Permanent Global Summertime, which lets us buy fruit all year round. Yet despite our access to fruit, we’ve lost much of the diversity that makes it so special. But there is a way forward. With the help of Fruit Hunters around the world, we can re-introduce some of that diversity into our lives. Because as anyone who’s ever tasted something wonderful or exotic knows: just one banana, or one mango, is never enough.