Market Watch


Fruit flavour didn’t diminish with crops that exceeded production expectations.


T


his may go down as a record year for the quantity of grapes grown in B.C., partly due to the size of the berries, which had a longer-than-usual growing season.


However, most growers and


winemakers say the flavours are still there, despite the usual decline in flavours with bigger-sized fruit.


Manfred Freeze of the B.C.


Grapegrowers’ Association, says 1.3-1.4 grams is an average berry size, while this year they averaged 1.95 g.


And, a B.C. Honeycrisp won for the heaviest apple at the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair in Toronto this fall, one of many very large apples noted here this year.


Agriculture ministry specialist Carl Withler feels a significant factor in fruit size was the lack of extremely hot temperatures, above 40 C, this summer, which allowed plants and fruit to continue growing when they might normally have shut down due to the heat.


He points out that even though cherry growers fought hard for a crop this year, against constant battering by rainstorms that threatened to split cherries as they got near maturity, it was still a big crop and undamaged berries were of excellent quality.


In fact, 300,000 pounds of late-season B.C. cherries were exported to California this year — a closer market than Asia and both quicker and cheaper to ship to, he notes.


Due in part to the large sizes, this year’s apple crop was also well over what was forecast to be harvested this fall, and it’s been selling at prices 10 to 15 per cent above the huge crop of 2014, reports Chris Pollock, marketing manager for the B.C. Tree Fruits Co-operative.


Ambrosias are getting higher prices than last year and they are selling better, even while there is a larger crop. Pollock says early on, 75 per cent of the fruit was size 88 or larger.


Gala volumes are down a bit from last year, but prices are slightly up for that


British Columbia FRUIT GROWER • Winter 2016-17 3


Longer season features larger fruit By Judie Steeves


variety, as well as for McIntosh. Apple prices for the past few years have been among the highest in the history of the packinghouse.


Overall this year, the crop is similar to last year, says Pollock, but on the marketing side, Washington State also harvested a very large crop of large-sized fruit.


That size likely began with a very early, warm spring, hard on the heels of another mild winter.


Climate researcher Denise Neilsen at the Summerland Research and Development Centre reports this year started off with one of the earliest bloom dates ever, in a spring that featured some record hot days, but then it cooled down.


Instead of another drought year like 2015, the summer of 2016 was close to normal in terms of rainfall in the Okanagan, but with frequent rainy days, which caused those headaches for cherry growers.


In Penticton, rainfall was nearly double the average in June, but amounts were close to normal in June and July elsewhere, and drier than normal in August, according to Doug Lundquist of Environment and Climate Change Canada. Grape growers reported some of the earliest ever picking of the early varietals, but they had to leave later ones hanging into the fall to achieve maturity. Normally, the Okanagan features a long,


dry autumn, sometimes punctuated by early frost, but this year, in most parts of the valley, the frost held off, but days were cooler and the weather wetter. Neilsen warns that growers should expect such unusual weather, with different combinations of early springs, wetter summers and milder winters in future.


While the industry has been built on normals — on weather that conformed to expectations 20 or 30 years ago-that is no longer the case, she advises. Today, that may be too long a period over which to measure change.


Instead, farmers have to be adaptable, and must rely on monitoring more than in the past, to ensure they’re on top of environmental issues and insect and disease pests.


She notes that in some parts of the world, growers rely on protected cultivation to control the environment, which is one way to deal with a changing climate.


Farmers rely on a long enough growing season for a crop to mature and a mild enough winter that perennials are not winter-killed.


Despite many other changes, those seem to be two vitals that aren’t as endangered by climate change here as day-to-day fluctuations and seasonal extremes of other sorts.


Expect the unexpected.


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