This is a video I shot with Noris Ledesma, at the plantation. the video is mostly in Spanish, but there are parts in English.
Here is some explanation:
In the video you can see that Jumbo Kesar loves the climate here in a arid part of the Dominican Republic, the soil is gravely and sandy, the trees only get watered twice a week.
The trees are 2 years in the ground. and some have fruit.
a plot with Kent, are not faring well at all, these will be top worked with Jumbo Kesar.
The plan is to export the Kesars to Europe and US, most likely to Europe first, as they do not have thermal dip requirements yet and the only thermal dip plant in the D.R. is a few hours away, and is not modern, and is of low capacity.
Some experimentation will be done to see find out what the best picking times are, to insure they ripen with some color, for US & EU markets.
Kesar has the characteristic of having a very good shelf life, of around 21 days, Ledesma explains that chilling actually ruins the flavor of a Kesar, and that no refrigeration will be needed, unlike other commercial varieties like the Kent.
As you can see in the video, the Jumbo Kesar, has a really nice size, and supposedly the seed is the same size as a regular Kesar, meaning a very good seed to flesh ratio.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCnW56M77Ywhttp://youtu.be/JCnW56M77Yw