It was invented hundreds of years ago by the Chinese, but American researchers are trying to copy the idea in hopes it will work here. The idea is that putting paper bags over young peaches as they develop protects them from insects, disease, abrasion, etc. The test began this spring, when researchers at Clemson University in Clemson, SC, placed bags on immature, thumb-size peaches about four weeks after the trees bloomed.

“We’ve been developing this idea for about three years,” said Guido Schnabel, professor and plant pathologist at Clemson’s Department of Agricultural & Environmental Sciences. He and his horticultural colleague, Juan-Carlos Melgar, won a U.S. Department of Agriculture Southern Region Integrated Pest Management grant to test the idea. “China’s peaches grow in more arid areas than South Carolina’s peaches, so we’re concerned about the moisture gathering inside the bags,” said Schnabel in a May 1 phone interview.

The main purpose of the paper bag method is to dramatically reduce the use of pesticides, Schnabel said, to create low-input niche markets and to offer solutions to so organic peach growers. “This is obviously a costly and labor-intensive practice. However, if high-quality organic peaches are produced, they could earn a good price for the grower,” Schnabel observed.

The Clemson research team obtained original paper bags used in China, but decided trying to use waxed paper sandwich bags because they are readily available, would be cheaper and not cost-prohibitive if purchased in bulk. “Some specialty stores sell custom-made Japanese peach bags in Japan, but they cost up to around $1 a bag,” he said.

So in April, about four weeks after the peach trees bloomed in South Carolina, researchers placed wet waxed paper sandwich bags, bought for 1.3 cents apiece at online, on 6,000 young peaches at the Clemson’s Musser Fruit Farm research center and at two commercial peach orchards. They used staple guns to secure the American bags. The Musser Center’s 240-acre research farm is a model fruit research facility for the Southeast and has an extensive collection of peach and nectarine varieties.

“We’ll have the results on our early varieties by the end of May, and on our mid-season varieties by the end of June,”   Schnabel predicted. “Then we’ll do a bunch of studies to on the test peaches for quality, size, shelf life, etc. We’ll report the results to the South Carolina Peach Council and at our production meetings in the fall at Gaffney and Edgefield, and formally present our findings at the Southeastern Fruit & Vegetable Conference in Savannah, Georgia, in mid-January,” he said.

A native of Marburg, Germany, Schnabel received degrees from Justus Liebig University in Giessen, Germany, and a Ph.D. degree in plant pathology from the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart in 1997. He was a research associate at Michigan State University from 1997-2000 and in July 2000 began his position as fruit pathologist at Clemson. Among his honors are the Lee Hutchins Award from the American Phytopathological Society in 2011 and the 2007 Cooperative Extension Service Team Award from Clemson University (Peach Team).