Pilot Test of Acidity in Mulberry Cultivars

 Apparently, the consumer electronics manufacturers made a lot of advances in the recent years. I just got a simple pH meter for food and tested it on six mulberry cultivars. Looks like it works like a charm. I was looking into the complex scientific pH meters for low volumes and those are some expensive pieces of equipment! Apparently, all I needed was a $37 device from our largest online retailer. 

The mulberry cultivars I selected for this pilot had contrasting amounts of acidity and the device detected these. Over the season, I hope to measure the pH values across all cultivars we grow.

Below are the data from today. I was lucky to find a couple of fruits of Murray’s Himalayan which I suspected might be the most acidic one. It produced the lowest pH out of these six cultivars. 

BRIX and Weight Data for 33 Mulberry Cultivars Harvested on April 20, 2026

 

In the below table, not all selections were at their perfect maturity.  The cultivars with low BRIX numbers will need to be re-evaluated at later dates.  

We believe that all long white mulberries such as Australian Green, Pakistan White and Saharanpur Local are the same.  However, their BRIX numbers are different here. Australian Green is the most developed large tree, and Saharanpur Local is a small shaded tree on only a partially compatible rootstock. 

We also suspect that Tice and Estero Giant might be identical, but we only have a small graft of Estero Giant on a multigrafted tree. Tice is a large vigorous tree and produced higher BRIX. 

Red Himalayan Naples normally has very long fruits, longer than Skinner.  On this date we only found smaller and partially ripe fruits. 

There are probably few other things I need to warn about, but don't remember now. We will try to do another round of evaluations when the later season mulberries are ready.

The weight measurements are average of 5 fruits with the exception of Naples, where only 3 fruits are used. The BRIX data is based on 3-5 juiced fruits and two technical replicates.

BRIX data is an important component of fruit flavor, but the degree of acidity and various specific compounds will influence the final flavor perception too. The taste preferences are also different for different people.  

My evaluation of individual cultivars can be found here in this Playlist on YouTube https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiwjdtJGDLQcA0f5VTpgCIs9vaPh01iqe&si=gez5QHy43hiLLnSs

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