Here's an article posted by Bryan from Montoso Gardens on the Yahoo Tropical Fruits forum concerning odorless durian.

Odorless durian raises a stink

By Thomas Fuller

The International Herald Tribune, Friday, March 30, 2007

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/03/30/news/durian.php

TUNG PHAEN, Thailand: You can take the sugar out of soft drinks and

the fat from junk food. But eliminate the pungent odor from the

world's smelliest fruit and brace for a major international

controversy.

After three decades of research, a Thai government scientist working

at an orchard here near the Cambodian border says he has managed to

take the stink out of durian.

The spiky Southeast Asian fruit, variously described by its

detractors as smelling like garbage, moldy cheese or rotting fish, is

banned from many hotels, airlines and the Singapore subway. But

durian lovers, and there are many in Asia, are convinced that, like

fine French cheeses, the worse the smell, the better the taste.

Songpol Somsri, one of the world's leading experts on the fruit,

crossed more than 90 varieties, many of them found only in the wild,

and came up with what he calls Chantaburi No. 1, after his home

province and the location of the research center.

The specially bred durian smells as inoffensive as a banana, Songpol

says. It will please Thai consumers, he believes, and might also help

broaden the acceptability of the durian, unlocking the door to

American and European customers who, like an increasing number of

Thais, would reject a fruit that smells like last season's unwashed

gym socks.

"Most Thais don't like too strong a smell, except some old people,"

Songpol said in an interview at his office cluttered with reports on

durian DNA structure (he has not yet pinpointed the malodorous gene).

Durian lovers are horrified by the prospect of a no-smell durian.

They complain that the fruit, which is green or sometimes yellowish

and shaped like a rugby ball, is being homogenized just like the

insipid tomatoes bred to look pretty behind cellophane on supermarket

shelves.

"Oh, no, this is the beginning of the end," said Bob Halliday, a

Bangkok-based food writer, when told about the odorless durian.

The fruit has not yet been officially unveiled by Thailand's Ministry

of Agriculture but will obtain final approval in the coming weeks,

officials say.

"Making a non-smelly durian is like a thornless rose," Halliday

said. "It's really cutting out the soul."

The no-smell durian is even more mystifying to those who live in

Malaysia, Singapore or Indonesia, where durians are prized for their

odor and priced accordingly.

"The smell must come out from the durian," said Chang Peik Seng,

owner of the Bao Sheng durian farm on the Malaysian island of Penang,

as he emphasized the "must."

"You cannot hide the smell."

It took several minutes to explain the concept to Chang, who

ultimately concluded that an odorless durian would flop in his

country. "If the durian doesn't have a strong smell the customer only

pays one-third the price," he said.

(Songpol says he has developed a separate durian that might please

Malaysians and Indonesians: Chantaburi No. 3 is pungent, but the

fruit only begins to smell three days after being picked, allowing

for odorless transport.)

There is probably no other fruit that elicits such passion - and

revulsion.

The litany of legends and myths surrounding what Malaysians call

the "king of fruits" is long and colorful. Durians are said to be an

aphrodisiac: When the durians fall, the sarongs fly up, goes a Malay

saying.

But woe to those who overindulge. Rarely does durian season - which

in central Thailand begins in April and continues till June - pass

without newspapers somewhere in Southeast Asia reporting a durian

death.

The fruit, which is rich in carbohydrates, protein, fat and sulfurous

compounds (thus the smell), is said here to be "heaty," and can

therefore be deadly for those with high blood pressure, according to

Wilailak Srisura, a nutritionist at Thailand's Department of Health.

Tradition also dictates that mixing alcohol with durian should be

avoided at all costs.

"Durian makes you hot and alcohol makes you hot, so it's double

heat," said Somchai Tadchang, the owner of a durian orchard on Kret,

an island on the Chao Phraya river north of Bangkok, where special

Gan Yao (long stem) durians sell for upwards of $40 a fruit, the

equivalent of several days' wages for a laborer here.

Songpol says he has not found a scientific reason why durian and

alcohol are incompatible, but would not dare consume both at the same

time.

He claims to have recently cut back on his personal durian

consumption for health reasons ("Fat!" his secretary exclaims), but

his work requires him to taste 1,000 durians each season at the

research orchard here.

Born and reared in a durian orchard, Songpol started studying the

fruit in 1977 as a graduate student in horticulture. Worried that

some durian varieties were disappearing as cultivation was becoming

increasingly commercialized, Songpol collected dozens of varieties

from around Thailand and planted them at the Chantaburi Horticultural

Research Center, which now serves as sort of a Thai durian seed bank.

The center is a horticultural Eden with flower beds and streams

rimming the rows of experimental durian trees that are shadowed by

nearby low-lying, jungle-covered mountains. Songpol experimented with

hundreds of different combinations before discovering Chantaburi No.

1, a cross between the Montong and Chanee varieties, the most common

found in Thailand today.

It's difficult to believe that any durian would be completely without

odor, especially after being cracked open. This year's harvest is not

yet ripe, but those who have smelled and tasted last year's say the

fruit had a very faint odor.

Saowanee Srisuma, the caretaker of the durian orchard here, says it

is the least-smelling durian she has encountered in her 10 years of

work on the farm. Suchart Vichitrananda, the director of Horticulture

Research Institute where Songpol works, says Chantaburi No. 1 does

not smell but he hesitates when describing the taste. "I can't say

it's better than the original durian, but it'll do."

Songpol's plan is to replace the Chanee, which farmers have a

difficult time selling because of its stronger smell, and plant one

million seedlings of the no-smell durian over the next five years,

covering about 6,400 hectares, or 15,810 acres, an area slightly

larger than Manhattan. Exporters are enthusiastic.

"It's a very good idea," said Kiattisak Tangchareonsutthichai, owner

of Thai Hong, a company that exports about 2.5 million kilograms, or

2,755 tons, of durian a year to China. "It's an opportunity for us to

export more to new markets that don't like the strong smell."

But the fear of many durian lovers is that the odorless variety is

just another step toward the erosion of durian culture.

Durians are a social fruit, traditionally sold on the roadside and

eaten by groups of friends sitting on cheap plastic stools, the

ubiquitous furniture of Southeast Asian outdoor food stalls. Each

fruit is analyzed in the same way that wine is sniffed and discussed

at a Parisian dinner party. Also like wine, durian culture dictates

that if the customer tastes it and does not like it, he can send it

back.

As the region modernizes, durian culture, too, is changing. Durians

are increasingly sold cut up under plastic wrap in supermarkets.

In Thailand, which has aggressively commercialized the fruit, farmers

specialize in Montong, a sweet, almost saccharine, and easy-to-eat

variety. Thai farmers use chemicals to coax durian trees to bear

fruit in the off-season, so Montong are available year-round and are

sold around the world. Thailand last year sold about 50 million

durians abroad, worth about 3.2 billion baht, or $90 million.

Durian traditions are perhaps strongest in Malaysia, Singapore and

Indonesia. Malay durians, many of them known only as "kampung," or

country village varieties, are typically more wild, unpredictable,

sometimes bitter and almost always pungent.

"To anyone who doesn't like durian, it smells like a bunch of dead

cats," said Halliday, the food writer. "But as you get to appreciate

durian, the smell is not offensive at all. It's attractive. It makes

you drool like a mastiff."

Thailand's Montong, by contrast, has a largely uniform, bubble gum-

like flavor.

The growing rift between Thailand and its southern neighbors is

probably best summed up by the way the fruit is harvested: In

Thailand's more efficient, standardized and productive system,

durians are cut from trees and sometimes frozen for export. Malaysian

and Indonesian farmers wait until the durians fall, often setting up

nets to catch the fruit to avoid its cracking on impact.

The nets also ensure that the durians, which grow on tall trees, do

not fall on someone's head, a painful prospect given the fruit's

extremely sharp spikes.

Songpol says he is also trying to breed a thornless durian by

crossing varieties from the southern Philippines. "I hope in the next

two to three years we will get a flower," Songpol said.

For lovers of durian - which gets its name from "duri," the Malay

word for thorn - this is too much to bear.

"You might as well be eating watermelon," Halliday said.

Pornnapa Wongakanit contributed reporting from Bangkok.