Three-quarters plum, one-quarter apricot

Chip Brantley remembers eating a pluot for the first time at a farmers' market in Culver City in the middle of the week.

"I was warm and hungry, and it looked like a plum... When I bit into it, it felt almost liquid, like plum jelly. I ate it outside the fruit tent, bent forward, dripping juice onto the pavement, and I used my two front teeth to scrape off the flesh that clung to the pit."

He remembers learning its name and proper pronunciation at another farmers' market a few days later.

"Feeling somewhat justified for having majored in French, I asked the man at the stand what the story was with the 'plew-ohs.' He looked over at me and said, 'PLEW-ott. PLUH-um and ay-prick-OT. Plu-ots.' 'Pluots,' I said, turning it over in my mouth."

In "The Perfect Fruit: Good Breeding, Bad Seeds, and the Hunt for the Elusive Pluot," Brantley details his affection for the unique fruit. He sings its praises. Co-founder of the website cookthink.com, he traces the development in California of the hybrid fruit and its increasing popularity among growers and shoppers in recent years.

Three-quarters plum and one-quarter apricot, the pluot is prettier and substantially sweeter than either of the individual fruits. The Flavor King, for instance, one of a handful of pluot varieties, is "dark purple, almost blue, and lightly specked with gold," Brantley tells us. It tastes "of caramel and almonds."

Pluots appeared initially in the early 1990s in markets on the West Coast, after decades of experimentation by Floyd Zaiger, "considered by many who knew about these things to be the foremost fruit breeder in the world."

A scientist in Modesto and owner of Zaiger Genetics, Zaiger, 83, has helped to create more than 200 new and improved fruits, from low-acid peaches to different types of apples and pears. For his contributions, he was awarded the American Pomological Society's Wilder Medal in 1995, "the fruiticultural equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize."

Brantley sheds light on the late Luther Burbank, too, a botanist in Northern California who cultivated numerous strains and varieties of plants during his lifetime, including the Santa Rosa plum and the plumcot, equal halves plum and apricot. He describes Burbank's work and achievements in the field, remarkable accomplishments that preceded Zaiger's by a generation.

Part personal narrative, part food world exegesis, "The Perfect Fruit..." brings to mind other nonfiction titles. The author's love for the pluot, for instance, recalls David Mas Masumoto's devotion to the peach in "Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm."

His look into the lives of fruit breeders and his forays into the Central Valley, "that enormous trough that occupies the whole middle of California," remind us in some way of Susan Orlean's experiences with orchid collectors in South Florida in "The Orchid Thief."

And his talk of taste, of pluots grown primarily for mouth feel rather than size or durability, makes us want to re-read Russ Parsons' "How to Pick a Peach: The Search for Flavor from Farm to Table." It makes us want to celebrate, and indulge in, truly amazing summer fruit.

Straightforward and occasionally humorous, Brantley's book provides insight on a burgeoning industry, one that can benefit farmers and retailers as well as consumers. It makes agricultural science accessible, helping us to realize where some of our best foods come from and the effort involved in producing them.

(This review appears originally in the San Francisco Chronicle.)