Prioritizing Fruit

[Epiphyte]

I recently tried yellow dragon fruit and liked it way more than the red flesh and white flesh varieties.  I also recently tried jackfruit and really liked it.  Since I like these two fruits so much, I really wish that I had learned about them decades ago.  It makes me wonder just how many other fruits I haven't tried yet but would love. 

One of the worst things in life is overlooking the best things in life.  Unfortunately, overlooking the best things is way too easy, given how many things there are competing for our very limited time and attention. 

Fortunately, we don't all look in the same places.  It's a given that plenty of you have tried yellow dragon fruit and jackfruit way before I did.  Those of you who loved it told others about it, which is great, but it took way too long for me to get the memo.  Way too many other people still haven’t gotten the memo.

The solution is simple.  We make a list of fruit and sort it by donations to this website.  For example... I could donate $10 to this website in order to increase the ranking of jackfruit by $10.  The higher up jackfruit is on the list, the more people would try it. 

Why not just use voting?  Because then the top fruits would be things like apples and oranges... fruits that everybody already knows about.  The majority can't know anything valuable before the minority does.  Plus this website needs donations anyways. 

I'll share a couple relevant examples from nature. 

When the 1st bee discovers that my cherimoya is blooming... hah.  Dragon fruit?  Nope.  I can't remember if I saw any bees on my Surinam cherry, but let's go with it.  She flies back to the hive in order to recruit other bees to help harvest the pollen/nectar.  The way she recruits is by dancing.  You probably already knew this, but maybe you didn't know how she conveys her valuation.  She does this by the intensity of her dancing.  The more valuable she perceives my Surinam cherry, the more intensely she will dance, and the more bees she will recruit.  It's important to appreciate that dancing intensely will burn more of her precious calories, so it's a sacrifice for her, just like spending money is a sacrifice for us.  We should use our sacrifices to prioritize fruits, just like bees use their sacrifices to prioritize flowers. 

To be clear, whenever we buy a fruit we are making a sacrifice to help prioritize it.  But of course we aren't going to pay more for the fruit than we have to.  We all want the best possible deals.  The problem with deals is that they skew the prioritization.  No deals with donations though. 

The second example from nature involves a creature that we all hate… slugs.  Ugh.  Go to the ant thou sluggard?  Actually, it seems like slugs are extremely effective at finding and destroying valuable plants.  This is because they are essentially completely honest with each other.  One lucky slug finds your jackfruit seedlings and fills its belly with 5% of them.  Of course the bastard wants to eat the rest of your seedlings, which means it needs to be able to find them again.  It does so by leaving a trail of slime that it can use to essentially retrace its steps.  However, if any other slug happens to stumble upon the slime trail, they will also be able to use it.  So the next night there are 3 slugs eating your seedlings.  The night after that there are 10 slugs… within a few days your seedlings are all gone.  Any subsequent slugs will leave new trails that say “empty belly”.  Well, they won’t sacrifice their calories to say “full belly”. 

Slugs are way too good at recruiting each other.  Good for them, bad for us.  Bees are also really good at recruiting each other.  Good for them and us.  What about us humans in terms of recruiting?  We have lots of room for improvement. 

Logistically, maintaining the fruit prioritization list would only be a lot of work if lots of people are regularly making donations.  By then though a portion of the money could be used to automate the system.  And then another portion of the money could be used to promote the list.  As a result, we will minimize the amount of time it takes for the best “new” fruits to go from scarce to abundant. 

[driftwood]

huh

[FlMikey]

Not sure if being trolled or not...but I'll bite.  Why would this "solution" supersede a free Google search? 

[skhan]

I'm glad you enjoyed Jackfruit.
I finally got around to trying a yellow dragon fruit and I found it to be really nice as well.

As for your suggestion, some points to consider are:

Would someone have the motivation to spend money to rank their fruit higher? (I get in terms of the forum donation drive but frankly those only last a few hours)

Taste is subjective, some people want things really sweet, some people want things sour.

Fruit access, Let say a bunch of people from South Florida voted for mango because of all the fancy Zill varieties that we have access to here.
If someone in Georgia saw the ranking list and bought a mango from the store they would be very disappointed.

Plenty of awesome fruit has only been tried by a few people and the only way to try them is to live in that locality or grow it yourself.


There is another thread where members list their top 5 fruits (not only tropical).
If your looking for somemore suggestion I'd start there, they may even have connections to help you find rarer ones locally.

[johnb51]

 

[Epiphyte]

Would someone have the motivation to spend money to rank their fruit higher? (I get in terms of the forum donation drive but frankly those only last a few hours)

For people who who are already donating, improving the ranking would be an additional perk. 

For people who aren't already donating, they are going to disagree with the rankings, which will give them some motivation to donate in order to improve the rankings. 

Taste is subjective, some people want things really sweet, some people want things sour.

The rankings will be a reflection of people's diverse fruit tastes... more so than the fruit selection at a typical supermarket. 

Fruit access, Let say a bunch of people from South Florida voted for mango because of all the fancy Zill varieties that we have access to here.
If someone in Georgia saw the ranking list and bought a mango from the store they would be very disappointed.

Plenty of awesome fruit has only been tried by a few people and the only way to try them is to live in that locality or grow it yourself.

Part of what motivated me to post this thread was I was scratching my head wondering which tropical fruit seeds to order.  Having access to a prioritization list would make it far easier to decide which fruits to try and grow, and this would greatly improve the distribution and availability of the best "new" fruits.   

There is another thread where members list their top 5 fruits (not only tropical).

We could compile people's top 5 lists, but the result would be same thing as voting.  We wouldn't see preference intensity.  It matters how much you love a fruit.

[K-Rimes]

This is probably the weirdest post I've seen on the site, but, go on.

Fruit is extremely subjective. I don't think this would really work. Most of us here love ALL fruit. I deeply enjoy a plum just the same way I deeply enjoy a durian.

I am open to donating to TFF, but I don't need it to anything but fund the servers and the work that people put in to maintaining the website back end.

[Jaboticaba45]

Jackfruit and yellow dragonfruit are incredibly common in supermarkets in today’s age. For example Sams started carrying yellow dragon fruit and I have seen jackfruit at Publix. I’m glad you like those fruits, but most of what you get at the market is no where near compared to fresh fruit off the tree. For example most jaks from the store are sappy and mushy - not good, but last summer when I went to FL I was able to try 3 varieties of jackfruit which were super good. If you really want to try good tropical fruits, I suggest going to FL (actually anywhere tropical like PR etc.)during fruit season. Don’t go by opinion of others regarding fruit. Just go and taste for yourself. I have tasted lots of different fruits and my favorites are no where near other peoples favorites.

[Epiphyte]

This is probably the weirdest post I've seen on the site, but, go on.

Fruit is extremely subjective. I don't think this would really work. Most of us here love ALL fruit. I deeply enjoy a plum just the same way I deeply enjoy a durian.

Your next door neighbor asks you for fruit tree suggestions... you're going to tell him to just flip a coin?  My Filipino neighbor loved my lemon guava so I gave him a few volunteers.  He also tried my Surinam cherry but wasn't interested in any seedlings.  My Costa Rica neighbor also wanted a lemon guava volunteer.  She adamantly refuses to even try my Surinam cherry because her mom told her that they are poisonous.   

How you would divide your limited dollars/donations among all the different fruits would reveal how you want your neighbors to divide their limited garden space among all the different fruits. 

I am open to donating to TFF, but I don't need it to anything but fund the servers and the work that people put in to maintaining the website back end.

Participating in the rankings would be completely voluntarily.  If you didn't see any room for improvement, then naturally you wouldn't participate.  But I'm pretty sure that most people wouldn't 100% agree with the rankings. 

A couple months ago I bought and planted an achacha based on one Youtube review and the vendor telling me that it can be grown outdoors here in the Los Angeles area.   Since then I read on a forum (here?) several members saying that there wasn't enough flesh to warrant planting it.  Maybe I should have done a better job doing my homework?  Well... yeah, probably.  But the fact is that information about this fruit is distributed among 100s or perhaps 1000s of people.  The most important information that these people have is their valuation of this fruit, which we would all have very convenient access to, if they were able to use their donations to rank it. 

Can you guess how highly achacha would be ranked?  Can you guess how intensely people want their neighbors to plant achachas?

[Jaboticaba45]

This is probably the weirdest post I've seen on the site, but, go on.

Fruit is extremely subjective. I don't think this would really work. Most of us here love ALL fruit. I deeply enjoy a plum just the same way I deeply enjoy a durian.

Your next door neighbor asks you for fruit tree suggestions... you're going to tell him to just flip a coin?  My Filipino neighbor loved my lemon guava so I gave him a few volunteers.  He also tried my Surinam cherry but wasn't interested in any seedlings.  My Costa Rica neighbor also wanted a lemon guava volunteer.  She adamantly refuses to even try my Surinam cherry because her mom told her that they are poisonous.   

How you would divide your limited dollars/donations among all the different fruits would reveal how you want your neighbors to divide their limited garden space among all the different fruits. 

I am open to donating to TFF, but I don't need it to anything but fund the servers and the work that people put in to maintaining the website back end.

Participating in the rankings would be completely voluntarily.  If you didn't see any room for improvement, then naturally you wouldn't participate.  But I'm pretty sure that most people wouldn't 100% agree with the rankings. 

A couple months ago I bought and planted an achacha based on one Youtube review and the vendor telling me that it can be grown outdoors here in the Los Angeles area.   Since then I read on a forum (here?) several members saying that there wasn't enough flesh to warrant planting it.  Maybe I should have done a better job doing my homework?  Well... yeah, probably.  But the fact is that information about this fruit is distributed among 100s or perhaps 1000s of people.  The most important information that these people have is their valuation of this fruit, which we would all have very convenient access to, if they were able to use their donations to rank it. 

Can you guess how highly achacha would be ranked?  Can you guess how intensely people want their neighbors to plant achachas?

Like stated above, fruit is subjective and you should go by your own opinion instead of relying on others. Achacha has a good flesh to seed ratio for garcinias and the fruit is good enough to go into my top 10 list. Does it matter to you? No. Fruit is subjective and you need to try for yourself first before getting the tree if you are serious enough. Granted, I buy a lot of trees without tasting the fruit. Some are rare and have not been fruited in the US before. Others are too hard to find the fruit. So what? I grow trees cause they are cool, fruit is a product of me taking care of my trees. While fruit is why people grow trees, the process of growing fruit is part of it too.

[Epiphyte]

Like stated above, fruit is subjective and you should go by your own opinion instead of relying on others. Achacha has a good flesh to seed ratio for garcinias and the fruit is good enough to go into my top 10 list. Does it matter to you? No. Fruit is subjective and you need to try for yourself first before getting the tree if you are serious enough. Granted, I buy a lot of trees without tasting the fruit. Some are rare and have not been fruited in the US before. Others are too hard to find the fruit. So what? I grow trees cause they are cool, fruit is a product of me taking care of my trees. While fruit is why people grow trees, the process of growing fruit is part of it too.

Today a plant friend visited me.  I jokingly tried to persuade him to eat some very ripe fruit from my nightshade weed.  He said no way, it's deadly.  So I googled it and showed him what google said.  Admittedly it wasn't very clear.  Just now I realized that I don't think I've ever had Atropa belladonna, the actually poisonous one, in my garden, since it has distinct purple bell shaped flowers that I don't recognize.  The flowers on mine are small and white, which matches the description of Solanum americanum, which isn't poisonous. 

A while back I was visiting another plant friend when I noticed something yellow growing on a distant tree in her neighborhood.  I realized it was a chicken of the woods mushroom and asked her to grab a knife and a bag.  We walked over and harvested it and I told her to take some.  She said no way.  Afterwards I told her how delicious it was, and that I was still alive.  A couple months afterwards she saw it growing on another tree in her neighborhood.  She brought it over to my place, I cooked it, she tried it and loved it. 

Of course your opinion matters to me!  But I probably shouldn't solely rely on your opinion.  The trick is making it really easy to quickly access everybody's opinion, but in the form of a valuation.  Hence the point of using donations to rank achachas and countless other fruits.