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Market Watch


Early harvest has been the norm; cherry crop excellent while several others were smaller than had been forecast.


I


t was a record-setting summer, with the highest heat units since 1958, which was the hottest summer on record at the Pacific Agri-food Research Centre in Summerland. Fruit matured earlier than pioneers can ever remember.


The first grapes, for instance, were harvested near the beginning of August, which was unprecedented, and winemakers are excited about the possible implications of the prolonged extreme heat on ‘big’ red varieties. One winemaker commented this could be the vintage of the century, with the longer hang time producing a sophisticated flavour profile in the reds. The record early and compressed season kept cherry growers on their toes, scrambling for labour and trying to keep up with ripe fruit, but overall, it’s being viewed as a successful year as well. Despite the extreme heat and other factors, the cherry crop was both large and of good quality, summarizes Hank Markgraf, grower services manager for the B.C. Tree Fruit Co-op.


Although cherry season is always a rush, this year was even more so than usual, he recalls. He doesn’t ever remember Lapins being picked in June before — and the season was over before the long weekend in August, weeks earlier than usual.


The size of the crop packed by the co- op was about a half million pounds over the 10 million pounds forecast, despite some stormy weather events that rolled briefly through the Okanagan Valley during cherry season, reports Markgraf. Although growers were scrambling for the first pickers of the season, two weeks earlier than normal, they did manage to find labour and kept them busy, picking, packing and putting chilled fruit on a plane the next morning.


Even though it was a big crop this year, he says the size came up to 9 1/2 to 10-row and the quality of fruit shipped to China this year was just fine. The one black mark on what was a


British Columbia FRUIT GROWER • Fall 2015 5


By Judie Steeves Record heat put a rush on picking


hectic, but productive season, was the appearance of the invasive alien pest, Spotted Wing Drosophila in the late varieties such as Staccato and Sentennial.


“It was pretty much a non-issue throughout the season, until Staccato and then we began losing blocks,” he reports.


He is still puzzling over it, because it showed up even in the orchards of growers who had kept up with their spray programs, which should have defeated SWD.


In addition to the large number of cherries picked this year, Markgraf says prices were higher than 2014, so growers should have made money on this year’s crop.


Pears were also two weeks early this year, so as soon as the co-op packinghouse finished with cherries, it started packing pears, notes Markgraf. Peaches, however, did not size well this year, and there was damage from the August windstorm, so overall it was a smaller crop than normal.


Apricots were a two-day event, with a smaller crop than was forecast, notes Markgraf.


Just like other valley crops this year, apples ripened two weeks earlier than usual, with the first main-season fruit picked in Oliver in early August this year.


Even though there had not been many


cool nights, which apples normally require to turn the colourful red preferred by consumers, fruit did turn colour, even with warm August nights, and they ripened rapidly, creating an early, collapsed season.


“It may not be September colour, but for August, it’s not bad,” comments Markgraf.


Again, growers found it difficult to get over the habit of picking in September, and to get started picking in August instead.


Despite a bit of sunburn on fruit, Markgraf says quality is pretty good, although fruit tends to be a bit small. He attributes that to the heat this past summer, which stressed trees and caused them to shut down on the hottest days.


Even though fruit size is down, he says the size of the crop is about what they had figured, a bit below last year’s crop of 180 million pounds, at 156 million pounds, still well over the previous year. In the southern part of the valley, the crop was about 20 per cent down from the year before, while in the central and north parts, it was about 10 per cent down from the previous year, he figures. Although normally apples are biennial, with a large crop one year and a smaller one the next, that wasn’t obvious this year, he notes.


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