The Durian Judge

“I started because I
love durian very much, any kind of durian,” explains Dr. Sobir, laughing. Tall
and a little shy, he laughs frequently as he shows me pictures on his laptop of
the different varieties of durian he has tried. “This one’s from
Miangas, small island,” he says as a photo of a durian with curiously blue
flesh pops up. “This one from Kalimantan. This one Petruk, from Jepara. This
one from Pah Haji Ari.” 

It’s hard to keep up with
the foreign names, and I often get the variety and place mixed up. Dr. Sobir is
patient with me, and in an effort to be helpful, he even writes down the names
in a hardly legible scrawl. The variety of colors is impressive; the color of
the flesh ranges from bright reds and yellows to pale white and gray, and that
intriguing blue.

The
sheer number of durian varieties is one factor that makes the fruit
extremely difficult to standardize for commercial production.  Hundreds if not thousands of durian varieties
exist in Indonesia, many of them obscure or available only in specific
villages. This is why the Ministry of Fruit, part of the Indonesian Ministry of
Agriculture, has started a program to standardize durian region by region. The goal is to discover which variety is best suited to each region.

One of Dr. Sobir’s
duties is to sample durians from all over Indonesia and determine the best
varieties. He visits several durian tasting festivals a year, where he judges local
varieties. Villages also mail him durian, hoping that their variety will please
the Dr.  A good durian must have good
flavor, a large flesh to seed ratio, a thick creamy texture, and a small
attachment area (where the seed attaches to the husk). “This one Kanjo, it’s an
imported Thai durian,” Dr. Sobir says, pointing at a photo of a durian cracked
in half, displaying large yellow pillows that look absolutely dreamy to me. “I
rejected it because you can see the attachment areas are big. That area will be
too fibrous.” 

Dr. Sobir hands me a
list with the top 77 durians in Indonesia. Toward the top of the list is
Petruk, the one we sampled in Jakarta. I was not a huge fan, and I tell him so.
Dr. Sobir laughs. “It was probably a Bogor Petruk. Petruk’s home is Jepara; if
it’s grown outside of its region it loses its flavor.” This peculiarity of
durian makes commercial production an additional challenge. The exact factors affecting
durian taste are not yet well known, but the quality of the soil, the weather, the
altitude, and pollination with other varieties all play a major role. 

The next durian tasting festival is on February 22nd, and Dr. Sobir invites us to join him at the BW Agro Center in Soropadan, a village in
Central Java halfway between Yogyakarta and Semarang. I accept his invitation
with enthusiasm.

“You can also go to
Jepara, near Semarang,” Dr. Sobir suggests. “Maybe you will change your mind about Petruk.”  I say I’ll think about
it. 

I’m writing this post
on the train to Semerang, excited to give durian Petruk another go, and maybe
solve the mystery of its name!