2014 Pear Crop

2014 Pear Crop

2014 Pear Crop. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

This is looking like a record year for cherries and apples but according to Kevin Moffitt with Pear Bureau Northwest, it will not be a record year for pears.

MOFFITT: And I think that is a good thing because of the large apple crop. We had a record pear crop last year. Last year was our year for the record so this year. So this year we just came out with an August revised forecast, we’re expecting a crop actually 6% below last years record crop. It will turn out to be about 2% above an average five year crop.

Moffitt feels this crop will be very manageable.

MOFFITT: Quality is actually, probably above average especially in doe of the districts like a Hood River. Wenatchee usually has a very clean pear crop and that’s no exception this year. Hood River is a little wetter climate so sometimes the finish on the fruit isn’t quite as clean but this season they are expecting a very high quality crop there as well. So over all it looks to be good sizing and clean shiny fruits we’re looking good on the pear front.

And Moffitt explains that pear varieties are really stable.

MOFFITT: One thing about the category isle haven’t seen a lot of new varieties or club varieties which you’ve seen so much in the apple side of the business. So we have a pretty good set of pears with Anjou, Bosc and Bartlett making up basically 80 to 90% of the production.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.

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