the strawberry in all its glory

The French love strawberries and consume 2 kg per capita each year. However, it is difficult to find your way around, among the many varieties that exist. Four out of 10 strawberries consumed are produced in France, particularly in Seine-et-Marne. Ambroise Thomas, producer at La Ferme d’Ambroise, cultivates 39,000 plants and picks thousands of strawberries of four different varieties, by hand. According to him, each has its own identity. Sébastien Gaudard, from the patisserie des Martyrs, in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, uses strawberries from Vaucluse to garnish his artisanal pies. From spring to summer, around fifteen varieties of strawberries are produced in France.

If strawberries are the delight of the French, there are more and more new varieties of fruit, adapted to the desires of consumers. Manufactured in the laboratory and called “hybrid”, these fruits are obtained “by depositing the pollen of one variety on another”, explains journalist Dorothee Lachaud, present on the set of 13 Hours, Tuesday, May 3. Some varieties are thus tastier, while others are more disease resistant. Among these varieties, the muroise, which combines blackberry and raspberry, the tangelo, a mixture of mandarin and pomelo or even the pluot, a plum crossed with apricot.