Issue Fruits Volume 60, Number 5, September-October 2005 Page(s) 293 - 294 DOI 10.1051/fruits:2005047

Fruits 60 (2005) 293-294
DOI: 10.1051/fruits:2005047

Editorial

Jacky Ganry

Fruit and Horticultural Crops Department CIRAD

Some sixty years ago, in September 1945, the first issue of the journal Fruits, then called "Fruits d'Outremer", was published at the instigation of IFAC, the French colonial fruit and citrus institute.

In his first editorial, Raoul Combes, Professor at the Sorbonne and Director of the Office de la Recherche Scientifique Coloniale, traced the outlines of the work being done by IFAC, which was to become IRFA in 1970 and subsequently a vital component in CIRAD's Fruit and Horticultural Crops Department (CIRAD-FLHOR).

The journal was thus launched in the immediate post-war period, amid efforts to "get France back to work" and rebuild, restore and expand its industry.

It is remarkable to note that the editorialist at the time attributed IFAC's strength to the merits of the people in charge, the youth of its research teams, and also its "flexible working methods". This aspect is now seen as crucial to any organization or company determined to succeed. In a way, IFAC was practising efficient research management before its time!

The new journal "Fruits d'Outremer" was intended to report to various study and production sites on the progress being made worldwide in the field of scientific research, technology and economic control. It also served to inform numerous laboratories worldwide of the results obtained by French science and technology researchers. In short, international scientific cooperation before its time!

The first article in the journal concerned the substances that cause experimental polyploidy, the mechanisms involved and the resulting biological problems. Sixty years later, banana varieties are being developed using chromosome doubling with colchicine, and polyploidy is a major study topic in relation to both banana and citrus genetics. Again, a subject before its time!

The Notes et documents section contained an article on banana in central America, summarizing a publication by Wardlaw in the journal Nature. The variety grown at the time was 'Gros Michel'. It was faced with a "terrible disease", the sigatoka or Cercospora disease, which was controlled by fixed treatment posts spraying a contact fungicide, Bordeaux mixture. What a lot of changes there have been in sixty years! However, Cercospora is still around, primarily in the form of black leaf streak, which has superseded sigatoka disease and is still a subject of great concern. Aerial treatments have replaced fixed posts, but for how long? The issues have changed: they are still economic - the term used at the time was "economic control" - , but also environmental, social and nutritional, encompassing food security, sustainable rural and urban development and public health.

Fruit and vegetables have become a priority for international research as a way of alleviating poverty, since they generate added value, of improving public health by dint of their nutritional merits, of feeding towns and fuelling urban and periurban development, and also of ensuring greater wellbeing and better living standards.

Fruits has become a scientific journal of international scope, covering both temperate and tropical regions; it is supported by the International Society for Horticultural Science (ISHS).

To paraphrase Raoul Combes, albeit in a new context, I have no doubt of the success of Fruits as a factor in international fruit crops research. The recognition and support of many players in the research community, led by the ISHS, are crucial if it is to continue to be of use, by providing the support it needs. For its part, CIRAD has every intention of continuing to do so.

© CIRAD, EDP Sciences 2005

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