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- New
Augmented Sweet Corn Offers Taste and Shelf Life
By
Greg Brown
Associate Editor
New augmented
sweet corn varieties are taking the vegetable industry by storm
as growers find consumers will pay up to twice the price for the
tasty new varieties.
Breeders have found a great mix by combining the long shelf life
trait of super sweet (SS) varieties with the sugary enhancer (SE)
trait of great texture and taste.
The result is sweet corn that tastes better, lasts longer and is
usually more tender – but in some instances can be prone to
bruise. By many accounts, the taste outweighs the extra care that
the corn requires.
This corn is referred to by a variety of names, many of them branded.
The Illinois Seed Foundation calls their version Xtra Tender. Abbot
and Cobb refer to one of their varieties as the Summer Sweet brand
and offer it fresh in special tray packs as a premium product. Stokes
Seed refers to theirs as the Gourmet line of sweet corn. Syngenta
refers to its version as Triple Sweet. These branded lines are not
the same genetically, but all feature a combination of the once-distinct
traits.
Blake Meyers, with Seigers Seeds, said these augmented varieties
are starting to catch on within the roadside marketing community.
In that market, the conversion to these varieties could be as far
40-50% of the production.
“Some of the standard SEs are losing part of their market
share with the conversion to these new varieties,” Meyers
said.
Many of them are new to the market. So much so, Meyers said, that
a year ago nobody knew what to call the sweet corn varieties in
general. So far they have been very popular with direct retailers.
While wholesalers have dabbled in the new corn, their hesitation
may be because some of the varieties with the highest quality in
taste are tender to machine harvesting, Meyers said.
Dave Mackenzie, president of Centest Seed Company, said that their
Mirai brand sweet corn has been doing great for farm marketers and
roadside stand operators.
While the variety has not made it into the retail environment on
a large scale, Mackenzie said that a few growers have made successful
forays into some chains. In particular, one grower supplied his
local Wegmans on the Eastern Seaboard, and created quite a stir
– especially when he ran out of corn.
Mackenzie said the variety, like many augmented varieties, fares
much better if it is handpicked.
“What we are finding out so far is that our product is getting
into the high quality niches,” Mackenzie said. “It is
the leading variety in Japan because of taste. When the consumer
tries it, they know it is different.”
Mirai was introduced in Japan in 1995. The variety was so successful
there, it managed to change the preferred color of the market. Here
in the North America, the brand does well with the roadside market,
as well.
“Because it has been considered hard to grow, we’ve
placed it with people we consider to be excellent marketers and
urged them to double the price,” Mackenzie said. “Once
people have tasted it, there is not issue with prices.”
Marketing is key
These new genetics have managed to expand sweet
corn into countries that never had much interest, said Bryant
Long, vice president of product development and breeder at Abbott
and Cobb.
“So many other vegetables are declining, and sweet corn
is booming. It has a lot to do with new genetics,” he said.
But the product still needs to be marketed well.
“Consumers are looking for superior products,” Long
said. “They want things that will deliver the benefits of
taste and nutrition. Their demands are what drove the company
to present the product in a more formal presentation.”
That formal presentation has taken the shape of a sweet corn tray
pack, sold with the corn partially husked. The company is working
to develop brand recognition with the prepackaged Summer Sweet
brand corn. Long said company president Art Abbott was one of
the pioneers of packaged sweet corn – beginning to work
with concepts nearly 15 years ago.
Better genetics
Some varieties
of augmented sweet corn have a very long shelf life, which is
something that the grower can use to extend his harvest time,
said Dean Cotton, with Seedway.
“The newer varieties allow the grower to expand harvest
time, and allow the retailer more product shelf life,” said
Cotton. “You’ve got a much greater flexibility, and
you have a more palatable product that is easier to get off the
cob, and it gives you a more pleasing texture.”
The down side is that it is not a product that lends itself to
a lot of rough handling, Cotton said. While the shipping trade
hasn’t embraced it yet, they may eventually as they go through
the learning curve of producing the corn.
Cotton said the varieties would continue to provide benefits to
the growers as they are improved, as well.
“One of the next steps is improving disease resistance,”
he said. “Many of the companies are working to have improved
disease tolerances on these types and that will give it greater
grower acceptance.”
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