A “durian tsunami” has crashed the price of the notoriously smelly tropical fruit, with some sellers in Singapore giving them away completely free, said the BBC.
The glut is the result of a “decade-long boom” during which Malaysian farmers “flocked to durian farming to cash in on growing Chinese demand”.
‘Turpentine and rotten onions’
Beloved by large parts of Asia, the prickly fruit is known for its distinctive smell that has been compared to “sewage, turpentine and rotten onions”, said The Times. The novelist Anthony Burgess famously described his durian experience as like “eating strawberry blancmange in an unspeakably foul public lavatory”.
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Due to this pungent smell, the fruit is “commonly banned” on public transport and in hotels in southeast Asia. But the global durian trade has gone from strength to strength; last year it was worth £5.5 billion, with 90% of exports going to China where a “newly affluent middle class is discovering a taste for the exotic”.
Prized varieties like the Musang King – known as the “Hermès of durians” – have proved particularly popular, as Chinese consumers become more “selective and sophisticated”. A single durian can sell for “up to 200 yuan (£21.50), and they are often presented on special occasions as luxurious gifts”.
To help meet this “insatiable appetite”, freight trains have been kitted out with “specially refrigerated cars” which allow durians to travel all the way from Thailand and Vietnam to China “with their flavour unimpaired”.
Tumbling prices
But now a “bumper harvest” has caused durian prices to “tumble”, said The Star. “It feels like a rare chance to enjoy a Musang King without paying a bomb”, said engineer Kelvin Tan, who travelled the 46 miles from Kuala Lumpur to Raub in Malaysia to enjoy the lower prices.
Customers are “swarming fruit stalls” to pick up bargains, said the BBC. A lot of the durian trees planted in the last decade to meet soaring demand from China are “now starting to bear fruit”, Lu Yuee Thing, owner of several durian farms near Raub, told the publication.
Some farmers, however, had been “grappling with poor harvests” due to uneven rainfall across the country when the glut arrived. While “durian lovers feast”, some growers of the tropical fruit in Malaysia are “chagrined”.
Malaysia’s Federal Agricultural Marketing Authority has stepped in to support the industry and help “manage surplus durian supply as the season begins to ramp up”, said Asiafruit. As well as preparing 142 cold rooms for preserving the extra stock, the authority has been buying durians from farmers at a base price to protect their incomes.
For fans of the pungent fruit, however, prices will “remain low until August” before “gradually recovering”, said The Star.
Until then, shops are taking “creative measures” to shift their extra stock, said the BBC. Viral videos have emerged of customers leaving a stall in Malaysia’s Pahang state with all-you-can-fit sacks filled “beyond the brim” with the spiky green fruit.
