At a fruits and vegetables store in Shuwaikh, customers are finding products such as candy-flavoured grapes, baby mangoes that can be eaten whole, and fruit hybrids with multiple flavour and texture profiles. Vendor Nabil Adel, who has worked at the store for 10 years, sources fruit from Europe and South America. "They're tired of the usual fruits," he said. "They want new flavors."
Candy-flavoured grapes from Spain are among the most popular items, sold at US$11.35 for 0.5 kg. "They're sweet like cotton candy," Adel said. Baby mangoes from Colombia are sold at US$14.54 per kg. "You don't need to cut or peel anything. Just wash and eat," he explained. The store also sells a hybrid blend of kiwi, mango, and pineapple with the seed of a mango, the seed of a kiwi, and the taste of pineapple.
Another item is a Brazilian citrus fruit described as "four-in-one," combining the smell of tangerine, the taste of grapefruit and pomelo, and the texture of an orange. The Sapo melon, sourced seasonally, is also offered. Adel said fruit is imported according to the harvest season from countries such as Spain, Colombia, and Brazil.
The store uses a cold storage facility maintained at 7°C, 13°C, or below 0°C to preserve fruit quality without affecting taste or appearance. "Most of us wear jackets while working in there," Adel said.
Across Kuwait, supermarkets and specialty fruit shops are seeing similar interest in exotic and hybrid varieties. Hybrid fruits are produced by cross-breeding two or more fruit plant varieties to combine traits such as flavour, texture, colour, shelf life, or seedlessness. This is achieved through selective pollination, where breeders manually transfer pollen between plants. The process is natural and does not involve genetic modification.
While cross-breeding has been used in agriculture for centuries, consumer demand for hybrid fruits has grown since the early 2010s in the United States and parts of Europe, driven by interest in alternative snacks, unique flavours, and social media coverage of rare or luxury fruit varieties.
Source: Kuwait Times
