JJNN: Beautiful Princess

Welcome again to JJNN for February 11th, 2009. Today we will be talking about expensive Japanese fruit.

I love strawberries. I used to eat tiny wild strawberries with milk. Since we got the strawberries from our front yard at the time, they were free. I sort of liked that. Sure, they were small, but free is a good thing. Looking though some news stories today I stumbled over a story (shown here) about a person named Okuda Mikio who found a way to grow huge strawberries that are suppose to be very sweet. You can see a picture of these strawberries below.



They look good, right? They should. Mr. Okuda is calling them Bijin-hime which means beautiful princess. Each one is about 80 grams (amlost 3 oz) which is almost 3 times the weight of a normal strawberry grown in that area. The name of the strawberries grown in that prefecture are no-hime which means princess of the field.

So, how did Mr. Okuda grow his new type of strawberries from the old one. Well he has been experimenting with new growing techniques for the past 30 years. He came across the idea of plucking all by a few of the first wave of strawberry flowers that bloom. That way all the nutrients that would normally be spread out among all the flowers go to the few flowers that were not plucked. This creates huge strawberries that are very sweet.

So what does this new type of strawberry cost? Well, they are not cheap. They come with a price tag of about 500USD per one strawberry. Ouch. I guess I won't be eating of of that type of strawberries. But, if you are interested in spending that much money on huge strawberries they will start shipping next year in January. Enjoy!

JJNN 13 June 3rd, 2008

Welcome again to JJNN for Tuesday June 3rd, 2008. In a bit of personal news, I finally got around to watching Pulp Fiction. Yes, yes. You guys can finally get off my back. I am not sure it was even a very good movie. I mean, I guess it was OK, but it's not on my top 50 or so. Any way, because I watched the movie I only have time to do one news story today.

Today I will be talking about strawberries. No, I won't be telling you how to make a cool and refreshing drink for the upcoming summer days. I will be talking about the this story.

You know, I really like strawberries so I was happy to read this story. The jist of the article is that Matsushita Denkou along with a farmer's group in Hyougo prefecture said that they have been testing a special light system that is suppose to make strawberries strong against damage from diseases. Apparently Matsushita Denkou already had a light system to keep the bugs off from the strawberries, but this system is totally new.

You may be wondering how light can make strawberries strong against diseases. Well the lights shine at a certain wavelength in the ultra-violet light. The ultra-violet light helps to make the strawberries immune to certain diseases and even helps to fight some types of mold. If the farmers use this system 6 hours a day for 8 months, the number of times that the farmers have to spray agricultural chemicals is reduced by 1/3 and the amount of strawberries that comes out of a harvest is raised by 40%.

Sounds good, right? Well let's look at the money side of things. For a farm that is 1000 cubic meters in area, 30 of these lights are needed. The lights and the control system that is needed to operate the lights will cost around 1,200,000 yen. A pretty penny, but in the long run it will probably pay for itself many times over. Plus, I am up for any technology that helps out the strawberries.

Any way it is now time for the word of the day. Today's word is　苺(いちご). It is pronounced ichigo and means strawberry. I remember picking (very) small wild strawberries by the road when I was a kid and putting them in milk. That was a damn good drink. MMmmm... Real strawberry milk...

That's it for today. See you next time at JJNN.