California-based Purity Organic Produce expects its first arrivals of organic Peruvian avocados next week, along with its first ever imports of Satsuma mandarins from the Andean country. Founder Greg Holzman caught up with www.freshfruitportal.com to discuss this and other organic developments in the pipeline.

Holzman said demand was high for the company's first ever imports of organic Peruvian Minneolas last year, and this year this variety will be preceeded by Satsumas for the coming 4-6 weeks.

He said the citrus farmer Purity works with in Peru conducts extensive leaf nutrition analysis in its orchard blocks, resulting in good quality production.

"The result is pretty impressive. When I was eating the fruit on the tree last year I couldn’t believe it - we're hoping of course for good arrivals.

"It’s a more frail fruit than a Minneola or a Navel or Valencia orange, and we are being asked to put it through cold treatment by the USDA which puts a little bit more stress on the fruit, but the fruit is so strong and in such good shape from what I can tell.

"We have watched his [the grower's] practices and helped him decide when to harvest so we'll have the opportunity to get a good arrival with high quality product."

Last year's U.S. avocado market, for conventional and organic, went through growing pains last year with the entry of Peruvian fruit. Holzman said the situation was looking different this year.

"From what I understand, Peruvian avocados started early in Europe and didn’t go well; there were real issues in ripening. They sent fruit that didn’t have much oil in it," he said.

"The marketing order here required that they have an average of 23% dry matter - they had to wait longer than normal this year as far as the fruit we were receiving.

He added that while California had a bigger avocado crop, the size was smaller. With demand generally slightly higher for larger avocados, the organic veteran was hopeful Peru could deliver on size to find a niche.

"I think at the end of the day, the size expectation may not be there, at least in the fruit that we receive."

Other programs in store

Holzman also mentioned the company was working toward importing organic fresh coconuts from Mexico.

"We should be seeing some test cans arriving in the next four weeks; we’ve been working on a process to preserve the fruit organically and we think we’ve got it with our grower-partner down there," he said.

"I think we’re going to have the only organic coconuts out there, and they are from Mexico so it's close. We expect pretty good shelf life. We have come up with a good bath for the fruit."

The company will be selling both 6-month-old and 9-month-old coconuts to test which consumers prefer.

He added the company was also developing a program for organic mangoes in the Mexican state of Baja California.

"We asked our grower-partner from Michoacan to go to the Baja and bring some expertise there, and we’re seeing the benefits of that.

"Our expectation is that we’re going to have a pretty strong volume of non-hot water-treated fruit coming into the U.S. - we'll be advertising it as such as we see the volumes coming.

"It’ll be a bit earlier than in years' past and it will last longer than in years' past. Our goal is to stretch the season as best we can with these delicious mangoes coming out of Baja."

He added the varieties would be mostly Kents and Keitts, as well as some Tommy Atkins.

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