This year, as every year, Family Tree Farms in Reedley, CA, has introduced several new varieties of stone fruit to the market that have come out of the company’s research and development facility, where the focus is on flavor, according to Dave Goforth, marketing director of Family Tree Farms Marketing LLC.

The new introductions for 2014 include five or six varieties of white flesh peaches and nectarines and three new varieties of plumcots.

“The research and development center just keeps performing, and it is so fun,” Gofoth said. “Our R&D Center has been running for nearly 10 years now, so the fruit of their labor is being realized.”

With several new white flesh peaches and nectarines being added to the mix this year, “our ‘Great Whites’ program just keeps getting better and better every single year,” he said. “With confidence, we load white flesh peaches and white flesh nectarines every day, knowing that what we are selling is the right genetics and it is the right quality and it tastes great. So from that perspective, things are going very, very well. I think the customers can buy white flesh product here with confidence that they are going to be getting the right product.”

Beyond the white flesh category, Family Tree continues its development of new varieties of apriums, plumcots and flat peaches. “Every year we add three or four varieties, and we remove the ones that aren’t so good,” he said.

At the same time, with an eye to the future, “we are still traveling the world looking for the best of the best of new varieties being developed by fruit breeders around the globe,” Goforth said. “And we are not afraid to go down the road of better eating fruit. That has served very nicely in our success.”

Family Tree Farms’ producing acreage continues to grow. The company is owned by the Dave Jackson family, and part of its growth is coming from a new generation of family members who are going into the farming business. “There are a lot of grandkids” who are buying farmland, and “Grandpa gives them some trees.” They are becoming active farmers, and “here comes another generation,” Goforth said.

“And they are all very interested in what is happening with this variety or that variety,” he continued. “They want to have the greatest new thing and are willing to take some chances.” They are also creative and have new ideas. That is “a nice input” into a business “that has a great tradition.”

On the marketing side, “we are developing new in-store promotional materials,” Gofoth said. For example, free-standing displays “are being used a lot now by our customers. We work very, very hard to figure out how to tell the story in the store.” How, for example, do you explain to consumers the difference between an aprium and an apricot or explain why a plumcot is higher priced than a plum? “We just need to tell that story, via signage or whatever, and we think we are getting better and better at our ability to work with our retailers on that.”

When The Produce News talked to Goforth on April 17, the company was in full production in the West Hills area of the San Joaquin Valley with its Snow Angel white nectarine crop.

“It is a nice looking crop, full color, and sugars are very normal,” he said.

He expected the apricot harvest to begin around April 21, with early season cherries starting about the same time. Cherry, plum, plumcot and apricot sets look lighter than normal for the company, but peaches and nectarines look to be close to normal, he said.