| Food and drink specialities |
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 The perfect Prune > The Prune cycle
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White-clad plum orchard ( :J.M.- CDT47) |
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Ordinarily, a plum tree starts to bear fruit four to six years after planting and reaches its full production capacity (150 to 300 pounds of raw fruit per year) some time between its eighth and 12th year in the ground.
The orchards will then continue to bear fine quality fruit on a commercial basis for about 30 years. In an age where most fruit are now harvested in the early stages and ‘mature’ in various man-made mechanisms, plums for prunes are one of the few fruits allowed to fully ripen on the tree before they are picked for processing. Fruit firmness and natural sugar content determine the picking date.
Optimum variety
Dried plum varieties can be dried without fermenting while still containing the pits. This is not true of all varieties of plums. Agen’s Prune d’Ente is recognised as by far the best plum variety for the best prunes.
The California dried plum (70% of current world prune production) is an offshoot of what American orchardists call 'La Petite d'Agen', with its royal purple outer skin and amber coloured flesh. |
