Many years ago, durians were only sold whole.

People typically walk into a durian store, grab what they want, pay for it, then bring the hazardous green fruit back home and open it themselves.

This whole process actually presents a few problems to both buyers and sellers.

On the buyer side:

• People cannot be certain how ripe and consumable a durian is until they get home to crank it open
• They don’t know how much fruitlets are actually inside the durian
• Many also lack the knife skills to open the fruit properly and can potentially hurt themselves
• They find it intimidating dealing with aggressive durian salesmen who are holding a knife in hand

These are just some problems faced by buyers that can easily be seen as justified not to buy durians at all.

Then on the seller side:

• They don’t want customers to end up with bad durians as it hurts their reputation
• Since they can only be 100% certain of a durian’s quality when it is opened, they also want to maximize profits by selling premium durians at a regular prices
• Customers can make buying decisions more easily if they know what they are getting for the money they pay.

It’s so common for consumers to complain about the low yield and low quality of fruitlets after they open their durians at home. Something that is still a big problem today.

Taking into account that durians these days can cost an arm and a leg, simply saying that buyers can get very angry when they don’t feel they are getting what they have paid for is an understatement. Many will feel as if being victims of fraud.

Imagine signing up for data speeds of 2gbps and only clocking 2mbps on your device. It can be so frustrating.

With so many issues facing this buying process, it makes a lot of business sense, both on the buyer and seller sides, to open up durians and pack them in a box for sale.

A practice that is very widespread today.

Doing so enables sellers to properly grade durian fruilets and group them accordingly in boxes. They can discard fruitlets that don’t meet their standards and effectively serve as the quality assurance for their customers.

On the other side of the fence, customers can see for themselves what they get. They also feel better about buying the flesh instead of paying for the inedible husk that is sometimes as thick as an economics textbook.

Many also avoid buying durians even though they crave for it because they don’t like the unglamorously rugged manner they have to choose the fruits, and also having to deal with sellers who are often not the best communicators.

Buying from boxes is the preferred way for this segment of the market.

It’s a perfect solution. One that Einstein would be proud of.

This new operating process of buying durians in a box eliminates a lot of the problems and expands the size of the market… but they also provide a new opportunity to unscrupulous sellers.

Because now that consumers are unable to observe how these fruits ended up in the boxes, it pretty much means that sellers have free rein to do whatever they want as long as nobody sees them.

Take note that I’m referring to durians packed and sold in boxes where customers never get to see the whole packing process. Not those where people choose the durians whole and have the sellers pack them in boxes in their presence on the spot.

What consumers forgo in this transaction is the chance of paying an average price for a durian, and then finding out that it has glorious fruitlets inside when opened. Because for boxed durians, sellers would move these fruitlets to the premium box at a higher price.

That’s without mentioning the prospect that consumers could be paying luxurious prices for average durians just because the fruitlets exhibit visible features likened to fruits from premium old trees. Because you can bet that even if a fruit is from a young tree, it would be sold as premium durians if it looks like that from an old tree.

You want wrinkles? A seller can just “beat up” a fruit to create those wrinkles and sell it for 30% more. They just look good but taste like potato.

Do you buy your durians from boxes?

You might change your mind after reading this. Or at least be much more wary when doing so.

So how do these durians end up in boxes? Where do they come from? And what risks are you taking?

1) Bad durians

If you don’t already know, as much as 20% (and sometimes more) of durians delivered from plantations to retail stores get discarded even on a good day. Many due to fruits that opened up from being unable to stay intact during transport.

In the old days, they simply cannot command the market price in this form.

These days, they can be sold to the downstream market to make desserts and puree. But that’s besides the point.

Imagine those that had split open in transit, exposing the lobes of flesh to the pollution on the road. Sucking up all the exhaust fumes from queuing for 4 hours at the causeway. Surely you won’t want to eat that.

A good portion of the condemned are also durians that have gone bad or harvested as unripe or bad durians in the first place.

Durians in boxes allows sellers an opportunity to salvage whatever they can from these bad durians. This presents an opportunity that was never available in the past.

If you observe durian sellers opening durians for customers at the store, you’d notice that they put aside bad durians immediately when discovered. They don’t throw them into the rubbish bin… because they will go back to them to salvage the other lobes when no one else is looking… then put them in a box for sale.

It’s not that sellers knowingly cheat and sell consumers bad durians.

But what they do is open up these condemned durians and look for fruitlets that appear consumable.

This does not mean that only good ones are put in the box. Those that fail the very definition of edible can also be placed in boxes waiting for the next carrot-head to come along.

It’s totally possible that a durian has some bad segments and some good segments as well. But would you eat from a durian where some parts are rotten or infested?

I’m sure a lot of people have had the experience of finding fat worms in durians after opening them up at home. They would of course not consume the affected parts, but the odds are that they would still eat the seemingly unaffected part because they have paid good money for it!

A question you should ask is whether you would eat the seemingly good parts of such a durian if you opened it at a store. Or would you refuse to buy it?

I actually have some pictures of worm infested durians. But I decided not to post them on second thought as they just look too gross. I don’t know about you, but I’ll not eat any section of a durian that has any section infiltrated by a worm. Even if it seems like it is unaffected.

I know many people will have no qualms about consuming healthy-looking lobes found on bad durians. It’s just not for me.

There’s actually a market for worm infested durians and those that obviously have some defects. They are sold wholesale at very low prices. You will see them at distribution centers. Why would anyone buy these durians? The answer will be obvious when you think from a business angle rather than from the perspective of a consumer.

So let’s take a musang king that has opened up for example. A seller might assess that 50% of it can still be salvaged and proceeds to pack it in a box.

How does he make up for the empty space in a box? Draw from another condemned durian of course!

You’d actually be lucky if a seller replaced bad portions of a durian with an edible portion from another. Because many don’t do it at all for orders collected online.

This is why a lot of times, people buy 10kg of whole durians on live sales and eventually only received less than 2kg of aril with seed. Some even closer to 1kg. Considering that the average yield of durians is about 25% give or take, under 2 kilos is very little flesh. This is because when dehusking the durians for you, the seller “encounters” bad durians and discard them instead of replacing the bad portions.

You don’t need to be a genius to realise that when you buy 10kg of durians without inspecting them, the seller is going to allocate the bad durians like the ones with worm holes and the ones that have cracked open to you.

And when sellers claim that a durian is AAA grade, do take it with a grain of salt. It means nothing. The grading of durians like MSW refers more to the size and shape of the fruit. It does not mean better quality, more delicious, or more bitter than Panadol. Without the husk as evidence, anything that looks yellow can be claimed to be grade AAA.

This makes paying a higher price of supposedly higher grade MSW redundant when you are buying from boxes.

Which leads us to the next point.

2) Durian mix

It’s actually disturbingly common that we find fruitlets of different colour tones inside styrofoam or plastic boxes these days.

Clearly indicating that they are from different durians.

It’s actually fine when sellers just label a price on them like $10/box. When consumers buy them, they know and accept that they are taking a risk and what they end up with is down to luck and eye power.

But this tampering is not okay at all when we are paying good money for premium cultivars like black thorn or tekka.

Just like when you book accommodation at a 5-star hotel, you’d expect the room to be spick and span when you enter. Nothing less.

The “professional” practice is to only put fruitlets of the same durian into 1 box. The exception is when durians are opened in the presence of the customers who are able to observe this packing process first hand.

If you order durian delivery for example, and find different coloured fruitlets packed together, it’s a clear sign that your durians have been mixed.

This can be fine if the durians are of the same cultivar, standard and quality. But they can also be of a different cultivar too.

As durians are mostly identified from their exteriors with husk, you cannot tell for certain whether one is a hor lor or 101 when all you see are the yellow pulps.

Granted the taste should enable one to tell them apart. But rookies would not be able to differentiate them.

That test between hor lor and 101 is actually an easy one for the trained eye.

What if D88 is mixed with MSW (D197)? D88 and D197 can look very alike and even experts usually tell them apart by the appearance of their husks. Veteran connoisseurs might eventually be able to tell them apart from the taste.

But newbies? No chance.

Keep in mind that D197 can be about twice the price of D88. Sometimes even more. So I’m pretty sure you won’t feel good about yourself when you have purchased D88 at the price of D197.

The silver lining is that you might not even realise that you’ve been swindled. So it might not leave a bad experience after all 😀

3) Pressed durians

A common practice of consumers when choosing durians is for sellers to open a portion of a durian and allow the customer to press the flesh to determine whether it is soft enough.

While these acts create a depression on the fruitlets, everything will be all find and dandy as long as the customers ends up paying for the fruit itself.

However at times, people press and don’t buy. Leaving a mark on the fruit that nobody else would want.

These fruitlets then have nowhere else to go but into the styrofoam box, or black plastic box for that added illusion of luxury.

Just place it at the bottom under other fruitlets and the magical illusion is complete. You don’t need any expert trickery to pull this one off.

Buyers won’t even have a clue that they are being deceived. And they would end up slurping on someone else’s fingerprints.

4) Frozen durian

To understand this point, durianers need to understand that a premium fruit charging premium price needs to be fresh.

Freshness is a key determinant of the quality of durians. In the language of HR, this would be a KPI with major weightage.

Even the best durian that dropped from a 50 year old tree will lose at least half it’s quality and half it’s value if it has been as much as 3 days following the drop.

So why should you compromise your expectations when you pay a premium price?

Why pay an exuberant price meant for a durian that dropped within 4 hours and end up with one that is 3 days old?

Is it fine to pay for an iPad with WIFI and LTE, then receive one with only WIFI? Of course not! But in the durian world, from the perspective of sellers, this is totally part of the deal! And it’s human nature for consumers to feel that that’s preposterous!

I’m totally fine with paying a high price for high quality. But I just find it hard to stomach when I pay a high price for products that are simply not worth that much.

And the only information I can go by is that the seller claims that it is worth that much.

A way that sellers attempt to prolong the longevity of durians is with refrigeration and freezing.

As unsold durians left in the open can go bad quickly, leftover inventory are often dehusked, packed into boxes and kept in the fridge. Then often sold via durian delivery where the next victim has no chance in hell.

This is why we often see negative reviews of durian delivery services where the durians are wet and uneatable to put it mildly.

Ice crystals that form on durians even though they have been sealed with cling wrap can appear puzzling to people. But the ice actually comes from the durian flesh as it becomes watery days after dropping from the tree. The beads of water droplets on the skin of the aril solidify into ice as it is placed in the freezer.

The fact that business owners would allow durians in such a state to leave for delivery is so disturbing by itself. A total and utter disregard for quality assurance.

It says a lot about how they envision their businesses.

Never pay premium price for durians in a box. Otherwise you are just encouraging the proliferation of unscripulous sellers.

Also take note that bad sellers are using the freezing term very loosely these days, often talking about how the industry has moved into freezing durians. So consumers shouldn’t be surprised to get them frozen.

This is a misleading statement to make.

The freezing of durians referred to by industry professionals are quick-freezing techniques that uses nitrogen blast of freshly dropped whole durians at -40° to -90°. It does not refer to stuffing unsold durians in the refrigerator at the end of the day.

5) Kampung durian

For those who are used to brand names like D24, musang king and black thorn, kampung durians can be an arena that is totally alien to them.

It’s like a listener of pop music trying to talk about classical music.

By definition, kampung durians consist of the whole umbrella of durians that are not officially registered or grown in a registered farm.

While they can technically refer to deliciously proven types like D11 or D14, it is a term that usually refers to durians picked up from the jungles or private land where they grow independently without being cared for by farmers.

These wild durians are those where we can sometimes see selling for $2 a fruit or even under $1 a fruit.

The thing is that you never know what you are going to get with unknown kampung durians from the forests. Some can be as breathtaking as black thorn and some can be as bland as distilled water.

And they can take on all types of appearances as well.

If you are really down on your luck, you can run into durian sellers who wouldn’t bat an eyelid selling kampung durians as some premium stuff.

You won’t be able to catch him in the scammy act anyway since he packs his durians into a box at a warehouse where the sun don’t shine.

I’ve seen for myself numerous times of baskets of kampung at stalls in the morning, then in the evening I see them disappear and disposable boxes of durians appear in their place at double the price with a fancy name on the label. Something tells me that some high level marketing activities are going on.

To close off this topic, it’s worth saying again that…

If you are willing to pay top dollars for durians, go to a stall and get them whole. The seller can still extract the fruitlets for you and pack into a more manageable plastic box if you want.

There is zero chance that you will get the better end of a deal by ordering online. The best that you can hope for is that you receive exactly what you thought you ordered.

Avoid buying premium durians ready-packed in a box online or at a physical store unless you are absolutely sure of the credibility of the seller. Even that might not be a safe bet.

Some sellers show pictures and videos of their processing facility in tip top condition. Yet surely you know that they are only going to show you the good stuff right?

But if you are paying a low price and willing to compromise quality, then durians packed into a box, online or offline, can still be a good place to scour for good deals.

It’s not that what you receive from online purchases is guaranteed to be low quality stuff. They could very well turn out to be exactly what you ordered. But that lower expectations from lower prices will mean less disappointment when you get shortchanged.