Desmond Layne: One of the great things about this time of year is South Carolina peaches. Im Desmond Layne, a peach researcher at Clemson University. And we do a lot of work here at Clemson, to try and help our peach industry.
South Carolina is the number two peach producer in the United States. We believe that we produce the highest quality peaches in America. They’re known for their taste, for their juiciness they are excellent high-quality fruits. Lets try one right now (bites into peach). Now that’s a good peach! Juicy, sweet, if I was to eat some more of it, it would be dripping off my elbows. That’s what you’re looking for.
At the Musser Fruit Research Farm where we are right now, we have over 350 different types of peaches, and were testing them to see which ones perform well for the grower. We have white flesh peaches like this one here you’ve probably not seen a flat peach before. This is call a pintau from China, where peaches originate, and it has white flesh. It doesn’t taste the same as a yellow flesh peach, but its very good quality.
Of these 300+ varieties that we have, we have varieties from Italy, from China, from France, from many different parts of the world. Some of them will perform well in South Carolina; some of them will not. But our goal is to provide the growers with good information so that they can make good decisions, so that they’ll have a profitable industry.
