Hot Cherries

Hot Cherries

Hot Cherries. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report.

The hot weather has not created a great deal of problems for the cherry crop. According to BJ Thurlby, President of NW Cherries the front end of the crop at lower elevations was picked before the heat came on.

THURLBY: As you move up in elevation you move down in temperature and growers have all kind of tricks to keep the heat out of the orchards whether using under tree sprinklers, there's a lot of orchards I'm seeing all over the place with covers on them. There's lot of different things you can do to cool your orchards down but really what it means is that growers have to pick earlier, they've got to get more people, they need more ladders, they need more bins, they need more trucks moving because they've got to get it done sooner and get people out of the orchards because it's going to get really hot -that's an issue.

He says last year there were 18 days in July that were over 100 degrees like this year.

THURLBY: We're getting this down as an industry. I mean our growers know how to manage it. Packing lines are set up now where we can manage fruit with heat and so many growers/packers are moving these things called hydro-coolers all over the place where harvest is happening that we're getting the heat out of the fruit in a hurry. We're getting the fruit to the cold rooms in a hurry and then we're getting it run over these new optical sorters that can really find if theirs a defect or if theirs an issue with a cherry.

Less than perfect fruit gets pushed over into the processed market.

THURLBY: That takes, I think, a little bit of the fear and loathing out of what happens when it gets hot here because it happened last year and we survived it with a record crop and we had great quality.

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

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