Little-Known Fruit May Sow Dollars for Growers : Agriculture: The total crop value of the cherimoya, which reminds some people of pineapple or banana, might approach $350,000 in Ventura County.

The cherimoya, a little-known fruit that looks like a green grapefruit and tastes like ice cream, is opening doors to the lucrative specialty fruit market for Ventura County growers.

The fruit provides a good return, with an average 12-ounce piece selling for $3 to $5 in local markets and three to four times that in Japan. A very large, three-pound fruit--about the size of a large cantaloupe--can sell in Japan for $45.

“It’s the aristocrat of fruit,” said Beth Hillard, who sells the fruit for the state’s largest shipper, California Tropics of Carpinteria.

But cherimoya trees, which grow on about 25 acres in Ventura County, come with their own head aches, said Rob Brokaw, a Saticoy nurseryman who grows cherimoya trees for sale to growers.

“We like to make jokes about the cherimoya having a confused sex life,” he said. The trees produce yellow blossoms that start out as female flowers but turn into male flowers a day later, requiring growers to hand-pollinate their trees between May and August.

“So we collect pollen from the male flowers. Then we fill up a squeeze bulb with the pollen and find a fresh female flower and blow pollen right onto the pistils.”

Although it has a number of large black seeds, the cherimoya rewards the palate with a creamy custard center that offers the hint of a citrus tang. Some say it reminds them of a pineapple or banana. It is high in calcium but low in fat, and every bit as filling as a rich dessert.

“It was first presented to me as an ice-cream fruit when I was about 8 or 10 years old,” said Brokaw, an officer of the 89-member California Cherimoya Assn.

This week, about 15 growers in Ventura County and a larger contingent in Santa Barbara County began picking the first of the ripening fruit. The picking season lasts through December, when the richest and sweetest fruit are harvested.

Brokaw estimates the total crop value in Ventura County might approach $350,000, with the figure increasing as growers expand the size of their orchards and new growers plant cherimoya trees, he said.

Some growers, most of whom have orchards of two acres or less, will ship their fruit or sell it at farmers’ markets and roadside stands.

Four of the Ventura County growers send their fruit to California Tropics, which ships more than 1 million pounds of cherimoya every year, co-owner Anthony Brown said.

The delicate fruit is difficult to grow because it is very susceptible to damage from cold snaps. “It’s a crop of devotion and heartbreak,” Brown said.

Its inedible green skin is smooth but patterned like a hand grenade, said Bradley Miles, who grows the fruit on two acres along California 150 in the county’s northwest end.

“I take some every year to this old Dutchman who’s a machinist in Santa Barbara,” Miles said. “He asked me, ‘Where’s the pin? This looks like a hand grenade.’ ”

Cherimoyas are ripe when the fruit is soft, like an avocado. It is best chilled and served as is, or mixed into a daiquiri or parfait, the growers say.

A native to the slopes of the Andes Mountains in South America, the cherimoya was introduced to California in the 1800s and has been grown commercially in Ventura County for about 10 years.

The world’s largest production centers are in Carpinteria, Spain and Chile. But Spanish and Chilean growers have no need to pollinate, since either atmospheric humidity or a beetle--depending on which theory you accept--enables the trees to self-pollinate in those countries.

The cherimoya’s toughest hurdle in the United States is not pollination but a lack of recognition, said California Tropics saleswoman Hillard. Only about one of every 10 people knows about cherimoyas, she said.

“We want it to become more and more commonplace,” she said.