Ficus Carica ID by Fruting Habit

[Oolie]

A few years ago, I received a fig tree as a gift from a fellow fruit grower.

It is supposed to be a UCR 143-36 Emerald Strawberry.

It's had a hard time getting established, with gophers eating all the roots back to the trunk just about every year, as well as root-knot nematodes wrecking whatever the gophers haven't.

I've noticed that this year it did not try to produce a breba crop, something that this variety is known for. My thought is that it could be a reverted variant of the panache fig, one that is known to only produce main crop figs.

It's the tree's third year in the ground, and it's been quite stunted by lack of feeder roots, so maybe this is the reason that the tree skipped a crop.

It's not a loss for me (if it's a panache), as I had previously planted a panache in the same spot, but if I am sharing cuttings, I would like to be able to correctly ID the variety.

tl:dr
Is lack of a breba crop during a single year indicative of a variety?

[Oolie]

So after a bit of reading, it appears that some varieties can skip a crop if they receive some form of shock, in this case gophers eating all the roots.

It seems that the big difference to look for is that ES will have a light pink flesh, and Reverse will have a deep red flesh. Sometimes ES also has a long thin neck.

I wanted to report that right now in the deep east of SD, the Excel and VDB brebas are ripening up most excellently. Excel has a velvety creamy texture near the skin, but no honey. VDB has the best fruit it's ever produced (5th year), and it has remarkable sweetness, and great acidity as well.

[Jct]

With the challenges the tree is facing, you may want to dig it up and put it in a pot.  Let it recover in a pot, then you can see about putting it back into the ground inside a gopher cage.