Of Beach Plums and Apples: Innovations in Niche Crop Cultivation with Dr. Megan Muehlbauer

The following interview was recorded for the Poor Proles Almanac podcast with guest Dr. Megan Muehlbauer. She's an agricultural agent and assistant professor at Rutgers, New Jersey, agricultural Experiment Station. As a county agent, dr Muehlbauer offers guidance for the development, implementation, and evaluation of educational programming and research for commercial tree fruit production, management, and marketing. She's found her niche in niche crops, working with commercial small fruits, wine grapes, and related commodities throughout the county and region.

She also spends time researching hops and hazelnuts in New Jersey, as well as hard cider apples and other unique value crops such as beach plums, the subject of today's interview. Her work with beach plums is especially noteworthy, as this native fruit is gaining popularity for its hardiness, erosion control properties, and potential for value-added products like jams, jellies, and even alcoholic beverages. We talk about working through the challenges of getting this fruit out to the public and what the feedback has been from people who have had access to it.

Andy:

Megan, thanks so much for joining us. Rutgers is doing a ton of really great research around interesting crops. I actually had Dr Thomas Molnar on last year to talk about hazelnuts, and I'm sure you're familiar enough with his work and the hazelnut research going on there. So Rutgers is doing a lot of really cool stuff, and I think it's great that someone in the Northeast is, because up here in Massachusetts, it doesn't seem to have as much attention. So please introduce yourself and tell us about what you do at Rutgers.

Dr. Megan Meulhbauer:

My name is Megan Muehlbauer. I work for the extension division of Rutgers University, Rutgers University Cooperative Extension. I work out of Hunterdon County, so I'm in the central part of the state. My background is in tree fruit production. I actually received my PhD under Dr. Tom Molnar, so hazelnuts are also near and dear to my heart. I really like specialty crops. Yeah, if it's a teeny, tiny niche industry, I've probably dabbled in it a little bit.

Andy:

That's what I'm all about. That's why we're talking about beach plums because they're just a cool little fruit that nobody seems to really appreciate, and they offer such a ton of genetic diversity. I mean, how can you not be like, why are we not doing more with this? Right?

To your point, though, you have worked with a wide variety of crops, so how did you end up getting involved with beach plums?

Dr. Megan Meulhbauer:

Great question. So we actually used to have a small fruit extension specialist at Rutgers, Barbara Bowling, and she dabbled a little bit in collecting beach plum germplasm. Since we are a coastal state, New Jersey, we have beach plums that grow along the shore, and so she went, and she was interested in this crop. She collected a bunch of seeds, grew the seedlings, and then selected one of them at Rutgers. This is also down in Cream Ridge, our most central research station in New Jersey in Monmouth County, and the latest breeder there, the tree fruit breeder currently there, Dr. Joe Goffreda.

He selected seedlings that had larger fruit. It was a sweeter seedling with a good flavor. It was actually an open-pollinated seedling of the variety Premier for those in the beach plum world in the know. So that tree was in decline, and that single tree, because it all starts from one tree when you're selecting varieties.

I have some background in plant propagation, and one of the other agricultural agents, Jenny Carleo, was the agent down in Cape May County. Cape May is like the hotbed of beach plum production in New Jersey and so we worked together trying to save this germplasm, save this tree. So we collected a lot of scion wood from this tree and then we brought it up to the research station that I work out of, which is in Hunterdon County as well. It just happens to be my office is in the county seat part of Hunterdon and then the research station is about 10 minutes away.

So we ended up grafting that variety or that selection onto some peaches that I had established because we just wanted to keep it going, keep the germplasm alive, and make sure we didn't lose this tree and these genetics. That is how several years of beach plum research began for me. I didn't scope it out; it found me.

Andy:

That's awesome, the best way things can go.

Rutgers has spent some time in New Jersey as a whole and has historically invested in beach plums, more so than, I think, any other area except maybe Cape Cod, which is not far from me. Those seem to be the two spots that have invested in the development of beach plums.

What are you trying to accomplish in terms of breeding? Are you trying to get bigger fruit, sweeter fruit, thinner skins? Is it like, if we can do this, or this is the thing that we think we can get in the near horizon, that'll get it over the edge of like. Hey, this is a real crop that people want to buy.

Dr. Megan Meulhbauer:

That's a loaded question. There's a lot to that. So the breeding, yes, all of those factors they had worked to try to achieve in the breeding. Now what we're doing now, what we came upon, is so we're growing this crop in the central part of New Jersey. We're about, I don't know, two hours from the shoreline. So, we have no wild genetics of beach plum to pollinate this particular variety. That's what we came to realize. So we had very little fruit after we saved the trees, and we have the genetics, but we didn't actually have it growing a lot of fruit. So now what we ended up doing is we're looking to see what would be a good pollinizer for this particular selection and just looking at the compatibility of pollination in general.

Beach plums, because, again, a lot the areas that they're grown, they're grown wild. That's their native habitat and so you're going to have a lot of genetics there. We are really kind of taking that first step into really having them as a cultivated crop. I guess they've done some of it again. They've cultivated this crop, but they still always have that benefit of the natural genetics and the pollination and the pollen parents in the wild. So we're trying to find a pollinizer for this selection, and that just also gives us more knowledge of the pollination, how they pollinate, you know what's compatible, that sort of thing, and that's really our big research focus right now.

Now, in the future, I think the hurdle that we would need to overcome is that once we have that established, it would be nice to start doing commercial-spaced production trials. In those, you can start looking at more nuanced issues like fertility needs and what would be proper, what sort of pruning would when, what tree structure would lend itself best to higher yields of beach plums, and things like that.

I think we're probably at least five years off from something like that, though, and again, there's not a whole lot of people doing this kind of research on beach plums. Things pop up here and there, but quite frankly, it's, it's a, it's an interesting crop. You have to process it. Some people really like it fresh, but they are very astringent. So you kind of you also, growers have to have a market for that, and they're, so you're kind of backing into the production of the crop.

Andy:

I think that's a way to put it, yeah. It kind of reminds me of a toddler, like it's got severe pathological demand avoidance. You fertilize it, and it might not be like that. It just wants to be feral, which is really what it comes down to exactly, and we're trying to domesticate it a little bit, and it just refuses.

So when you say you're trying to figure out the right pollinator, do you mean in terms of timing because the genetics are so diverse, or is it literally because the genetics are so diverse that some male trees don't pollinate well with it?

Dr. Megan Meulhbauer:

Correct. Some male trees do not pollinate well with it. I think that some of it is also linked with timing. Just based on looking at what we ended up collecting this week, we've also grafted about 20 different sections from the USDA germplasm repository. We got scionwood from there, and we have that farm, and you can see there are pretty stark differences in the timing of the pollination. They don't put out a whole lot of pollen despite having tons and tons and tons of flowers. The flowers are teeny tiny, and they just don't have a lot of pollen grains. So there's several pieces to it, to the puzzle that we're trying to figure out with that.

But PDA, telling you pathological demand avoidance, it's true; it makes so much sense.

Andy:

I know you said that you're hoping that trials will be in the next decade to actually see what spacing looks like and so on. I know Dr. Richard Uva, who's in New Jersey, has the only, I believe, orchard of beach plums. He's done a lot of research about what spacing is he uses what he thinks its potential is, and I'm sure that's influenced how you guys see future orchards.

One of the things he's brought up is that he thinks beach plums could yield up to 4,000 pounds per acre. Do you think that's realistic? Do you think that's in the future, or is that always going to be like the benchmark that we're aiming for but never quite get there?

Dr. Megan Meulhbauer:

I think that's realistic. I don't know that we're really there yet. It's a realistic goal for, like, a standard production of a trial, but there are a lot of factors that come into play with that, and we need to kind of narrow them down. He's in this specific, he's in a very different growing environment than a lot of the other part, a lot of the rest of New Jersey, just in terms of soil type, soil fertility, the climate, and just having not necessarily had such swings in temperature that we would in the in other parts of the state, and all those things would factor into that number.

Andy:

So for you, from your perspective, what kind of environment is best? Because I'll back up a little bit on that. Wild beach plums grow in, quote-unquote, terrible soils, right, low nutrient, sandy, very often saline. But research seems to be very polarized about what's best for them because it seems like, depending on the study you read, fertilization's great, or it doesn't really do anything for production. It's very finicky. So I'm curious what you're doing even if you can't point to a study yet, just that kind of like the feel that you're getting from having worked with it, so just understanding what the needs are like.

What’s that sweet spot?

Dr. Megan Meulhbauer:

To get that answer, you would need to grow them at least 10 sites throughout the country and have them completely replicated. Then, you'd be able to make much more concrete decisions about how they should be fertilized across the board.

A study like that requires a lot of variation, including variation in climate, variation in soil type, and other factors, and it would need to be conducted over at least five years, ideally 10 years.

We do a lot of that with one of the most organized, and what I'm kind of saying in the answer is I'm emulating one of the most organized research studies on perennial crops that I'm involved in, which is the NC140 project, and we look at rootstocks for all different types of perennial crops plums, apricots, peaches, apples and we have these research plots replicated at sometimes 20 sites all over the country, into Canada and down into Mexico, and after maybe 20 years of doing this, we can say, okay, maybe that's the rootstock that I would choose to be growing with this particular variety of apple, and it would be the same thing for beach plums. Maybe, after all this time I can say they grow well with, you know, 50 pounds per acre of nitrogen. They need that requirement.

Andy:

Do you think that's ever going to get funded?

Dr. Megan Meulhbauer:

Oh, that's a good question. That depends on the market again. So I think niche, at least, there's been more of a push I've seen, or more funding available for niche crops than ever before, because I think everyone realizes that we need to diversify. Farms need to diversify in order to just balance the risk out, and there's interest in value-added products for all sorts of things. And that's really where beach plums would fit in, where there'd be jellies and jams or some sort of distilled liquor, liqueurs, things like that. So if you have a couple of growers with something like that, and they take off, then that would definitely give a push to a bigger project like that for sure.

Andy:

Do you think there are any selections in particular that you think I can't say yet, but I feel like these are going to be the ones that lead the project forward of what the future of the beach plum looks like.

Dr. Megan Meulhbauer:

Well, the Rutgers selection is a good one. I'm a little biased, though.

Honestly, there's not a whole lot of that, to my knowledge. It's the only formal breeding program that any beach plums have really come out of recently.

Andy:

The beach plum breeding history is really interesting, like a lot of American crops, where there was a bunch of interest. For a short period of time, one person kind of held the torch. When that person was gone, it was a scramble a decade later to figure out what happened to all this stuff. And then we just kind of loop that like every 30 or 40 years, and it's really frustrating to think of all the stuff that's been lost.

Dr. Megan Meulhbauer:

That's why we have the USDA germ plasma repository, and everybody should ship there. All researchers really should ship some of their scionwood or seedling seeds that they have from their selections so that we at least don't completely lose them now. Is that something that you can do as a non-official breeder or something like that?

Andy:

Is that something that you can do as a non-official breeder or something like that?

Dr. Megan Meulhbauer:

I believe so.

Andy:

I know quite a few people who are interested in beach plums, who are kind of doing the work of tracing down some of these old genetic lines, making sure that somebody at least says, hey, I've got it here. It is. If anyone wants some, I'll try to get it to you. But having that official repository is a really useful thing, and I've never considered it.

Dr. Megan Meulhbauer:

Yeah, it's a fantastic resource, and I utilize it all the time, and a lot of the selections are. It doesn't necessarily have to be a researcher or a formal university researcher who sends in a selection or seedling seeds that they have. They can come from all over the place.

Andy:

Because you're with the extension school, I'm sure you do a lot of outreach, yes, and trying to get people aware of what's going on with this plant and why they should care. I'm curious what you guys do and then kind of what the feedback has been. I mean, you're talking about how funding has increased, so that must mean not just farmers but other people are interested in it, too.

Dr. Megan Meulhbauer:

Oh, tremendously so. The research farm that I work out of, the Snyder Research Farm, is the northernmost research farm. Within the extension service at Rutgers, we host a lot of tours. So I have a lot of different groups, whether it be the Eastern Produce Council or county commissioners, university folks, so we do tours of that. But our biggest outreach event that we have is called the Great Tomato Tasting and even though the official title is tomatoes, I always have a fruit table because that's the focus of my research.

And for the first time, I actually had a beach plum tasting, and the response was tremendous. A lot of people knew way more about beach plums than I thought they would. That was, yeah, that I thought would be there, and it was interesting to hear all of the different stories of their background, where they had picked them, where they've had them, what they've cooked with them. That's one of there is a great response from the public, and that's one of our big ways in which I mean we have several thousand people that come to that event, and that's one of our ways to get the information out there on what we're doing work on.

Andy:

Yeah, I wish there was something like that. I mean, there used to be like the Cape Cod Beach Plum Cooperative. I can't remember the name off the top of my head, something like that. They used to do a lot of outreach up here, but I think since it disbanded like 30 years ago nobody's really picked up the torch on that. But I do think, as I don't know, I'll use the term for myself, educators in this space, like making people not just know about it but also be able to engage with it is super important.

Dr. Megan Meulhbauer:

We used to have a Beach Plum Association, a New Jersey Beach Plum Association, and unfortunately, both the president and the vice president passed away within a very short amount of time, and no one really was able to, or they haven't really kept that up, unfortunately. I don't think all is lost, though. We still have beach plums growing down here in Cape May. I think there's obviously there's still interest, but sometimes it takes some time, like you had said, for it to revitalize those organizations again.

Andy:

When you're thinking about, like, this plant growing and becoming a bigger part of, like, the niche crops, how do you see that actually happening? Do you really lean on this idea that it's going to be a processed jam or something, or do you think that the breeding work can get it to a point where that could be a fresh fruit that Americans with a very sweet palate are going to enjoy?

Dr. Megan Meulhbauer:

So I tend to lean toward processing because I just, and this is partly unique to New Jersey just because that's what a lot of our farms, a lot of the farms that have been established, especially in the fruit world, they have had to move in that direction, or they've chosen to move in that direction because the money that they'll make off of the product is many, many fold more than they would if they sold it as a fresh product. And this is in the world of ciders. Nearly all my fruit growers that I work with have cider mills now, and then they, you know, bake with the fruit that they have. They all have this extra extent component to it.

I think it's an easier, easier way for growers, or more like, growers are more likely to buy in with a unique crop like this, just because they want to know that they're going to be able to make something from it or just be able to sell it. It's all about the bottom line. Can I sell this crop? Do you know how many people are going to come in because they just want a quart of beach plums? Probably not a whole lot. And they're not willing to risk that right away.

Andy:

They want to know that they'll sell out of what they have, and shelf-stable products are easier to sell than stuff that you've got a really short window to try to get rid of.

Dr. Megan Meulhbauer:

This is very true, very true.

Andy:

You mentioned it a little bit earlier, but what other crops are you working on? If any of them, in particular, have some really exciting stuff coming up, or you're hoping to have exciting stuff coming up, please let me know.

Dr. Megan Meulhbauer:

So, the main crop that I work on is apples. I do some rootstock research projects, as I mentioned, but one of the biggest projects that I work on with apples is a variety of trials. So whether both dessert apples, fresh eating apples, and variety trials of apples that are suited for hard cider production, there's a lot of research in that world that's really taken off and exploded as the hard cider production has revitalized, and so it was really the cider seemed to revitalize first, and then growers that have fruit they decided that they want to grow some, be able to grow varieties that they can press and use in the ciders. So just looking at different varieties, seeing how well adapted they are to our growing conditions, with sort of insect pest diseases, things like that, that's what I'm looking at, and then, with the dessert apples.

So it's very competitive because, as you know, there's so many different varieties of apples on the market, but a lot of them are club varieties that you have to buy into the club as a grower or be selected to grow them, and it's often only in certain states. So only New York growers can grow the variety Snapdragon, for example. New Jersey doesn't have anything like that, much to our growers' disappointment. So I try to promote varieties, or show them varieties that are out there that they might not have known about, and tell them how to grow them, what their flavor characteristics are, their yields, that sort of thing.

Andy:

To the point that you made about the interest in kind of these niche crops. As a consumer, I know myself, and people that I know are much more into this idea of heirloom apples or finding things that have a unique flavor. I do think, as a whole, and I think most people would agree with me, that the quality of flavoring of our fruit is not very diverse, and it's not super flavorful, at least here in the United States. I mean, I've spent a lot of time overseas, and I do feel like the fruit has a different flavor there, and I think it's because there is a much more complex palette for people who have traditionally consumed more diverse varieties.

There's this very real sense of people realizing that and wanting to find those more unique flavors. So I do think that something like New Jersey, where you're not pigeonholed into what is already available, might offer you an opportunity to step into that role, and I'm curious if you're seeing that at all.

Dr. Megan Meulhbauer:

I think I do see it because it's still a hard sell to show someone what an apple like golden russet is, for example, and they see that it literally has russeting all over the apple, and even though it's one of the most delicious apples in my humble opinion because it is so much more flavorful, it's really it's a hard sell because we've been trained to look at them from the outside gloss, you know, trained to look at them from the outside gloss. You know, they have to be really glossy and pink and absolutely have no blemishes. So we're moving in that direction, but it definitely takes some time to get there, and people do like it really sweet. They like really, really sweet fruit, and apples have been bred to have incredibly high, you know, sugar content. And the other thing they people really like, and it's hard to show them different, different varieties from is Honeycrisp.

That variety revolutionized the market. Most apple growers and researchers would say it's the most challenging apple variety to grow, and we're trying to move away from it.

Andy:

Is it because it's so sweet?

Dr. Megan Meulhbauer:

It's because of the cells, the characteristic of the apple, that people love so much. The crunch is part of what makes it so difficult to grow because you have these really big cell walls, and then you have, because of that or these really big cells and thinner cell walls, you have a lot of calcium issues, so you have a lot of bitter pit which causes all the spotting in the fruit, and so you can't sell fruit like that, or you know your thresholds are kind of low for being able to sell that, so you drop a lot of fruit to the ground. There's a lot of waste with that variety, among other issues. The tree's just kind of more of a runty tree.

Andy:

And that's why they're so expensive.

Dr. Megan Meulhbauer:

That is why they're so expensive.

Andy:

It's not because they know everyone wants it.

Dr. Megan Meulhbauer:

No, it's because it's so challenging to grow.

Andy:

Well, now they've got the Cosmic Crisp. Is that any better for growers? Are they addressing any of those problems? Or was it more of a flavor, bring out the new product kind of thing?

Dr. Megan Meulhbauer:

Only the growers in Washington state are better off because they're the only ones who can grow it. With that variety, I'm actually not sure what the background is. I don't think it's Honeycrisp, but they are addressing the issue, and they've been. They use Honeycrisp as a parent in breeding programs. But they try to bring in the genetics of other apples that are a little easier to grow, like fuji. You'll see a lot of Honeycrisp times Fuji crosses now that are coming out because Fuji has it's a much denser apple.

Andy:

Do you think Honeycrisp's shelf life, like its presence on shelves, is limited, or do you think it's there to stay?

Dr. Megan Meulhbauer:

No, I don't think you're ever going to break people from that variety.

Andy:

Even though it's so hard to grow.

Dr. Megan Meulhbauer:

They don't realize it, and even if, and I think, even if people do realize it, they're willing to pay the extra money because they love it. I hear it all the time. Everybody wants to grow it.

Andy:

Well, I guess that's. If it gets people excited about eating fruit, we can't complain too much.

Dr. Megan Meulhbauer:

No, this is very true.

Andy:

Do you work with blueberries at all or no?

Dr. Megan Meulhbauer:

I do not really work in blueberries. Actually, we have an entire research station through the Marucci Center in Chatsworth, New Jersey, and we have a ton of researchers on that crop and cranberries.

Andy:

Again, I'm near the Cape, so we have very similar ecosystems. The Pine Barrens, so like cranberries, blueberries, beach plums, those are your kind of three big fruit crops that can grow around here and then like huckleberries, but nobody's growing them for breeding purposes, at least not that I'm aware of. I feel like if anyone would know, it'd be you.

Dr. Megan Meulhbauer:

I have not heard of them being in any breeding program now.

Andy:

Blueberries became a very big crop because they were available to fill the gap for canners who needed to keep their factories going. And I think you know to your point, beach plums can kind of do the same thing. You know, fill a void in like production to be able to say, hey, we've got fruit, stick it in jars, put it out the door where it can sit on shelves.

Dr. Megan Meulhbauer:

Absolutely, absolutely.

Andy:

So, for people who are really into this stuff, do you know if the extension program has social media? Where can they find more about what you're doing? The tomato festival, any of that good stuff?

Dr. Megan Meulhbauer:

We have Facebook pages and Instagram we do. The Facebook page that I would suggest going to where you really see the research is the Rutgers Snyder Research Farm. Where you really see the research is the Rutgers Snyder Research Farm. Okay, then you'll be able to see because we keep that updated with what's going on in our trials and different meetings that we have, and the tomato tasting is where you can find out about that, too.

Andy:

Awesome. Can the public get involved in any way in the work with beach plums? Do you guys ever need volunteer help? Or can people, if they are growing them themselves, contribute material? Is there anything people could do?

Dr. Megan Meulhbauer:

Well, they can. We don't have a big enough trial yet that we need a whole lot of volunteers, but in the future, I would definitely keep an eye out for that. We're always welcome to folks sending in samples or anything else, you know, just stories of their experiences growing the crop. That's what we're here for. People send us stuff like that, questions especially, but we get plant material sent in all the time.

Andy:

Awesome, Megan, this has been fantastic. I appreciate your time.

Dr. Megan Meulhbauer:

Absolutely, thank you.

To listen to this interview, tune into episode #237 of the Poor Proles Almanac.