Avocado harvest close to projection as La Niña looms
do because of the widespread unstable weather, specifically the temperatures.” The consistently inconsistent weath- er may have dented 2022 production, Wolk said. “The flowers that we had in the spring, whichwouldbe the fruit fornext year—be- causeof that unstableweather, the flowers fell on the ground,”Wolk said, noting that the weather may havemade it difficult for bees to fly and flowers toopen. “Theynev- er got pollinated.” Even so, Wolk was quick to emphasize that overall, he expects the 2022 crop to
surpass the 2021 total. Ventura County, the top avocado-pro- ducing county in California, saw no ma- jor weather disasters this season, said Ben Faber, a University of California CooperativeExtensionfarmadvisorbased in Ventura. Santa Ana winds and mild tempera- turesprevailed lastweek. “This isnothing,” Faber said. “The last twoyearspreviously,we’vehad those heat waves” inmid-to-late summer,
Davis professor named to USDA advisory panel AUniversityof California,Davis, profes- sorhasbeenselectedforaU.S.Department of Agriculture advisory panel. Paul Gepts, who is a distinguished pro- fessor of plant sciences, is one of four ap- pointees totheNationalGeneticResources Advisory Council. The panel advises U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and the National GeneticsProgram,whichworks touseand conservegenetic resources for agriculture. The advisory council is a subcommittee of the National Agricultural Research, Extension, Education and Economics Advisory Board. Since 2012, Gepts has led the UCDavis bean breeding program and has been in charge of producing new varieties of lima beans, garbanzos and common beans for the California grain legume industry. Gepts is currently conducting USDA research projects on drought and heat tolerance for beans. He is alsoworking on bean disease studies for the African Bean Consortium, for which he serves as scien- tific coordinator. He is associate editor for two journals: Frontiers in Plant Science and Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution. In addi- tion, Gepts is a member of the California Dry BeanAdvisory Board. ByKevinHecteman A largely drama-free avocado-growing season has all but ended, with the crop close tomeetingmidseason projections. As of last week, the 2020-2021 season— whichstartedNov. 1, 2020—hadseen263.5 million pounds of fruit come off the trees, according to figures from the California Avocado Commission. That’s just below the 265 million pounds forecast in the commission’s April survey of growers and handlers. Bycontrast, the2019-2020grow- ing season—which ran into the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic—ended with 375.5 million pounds, according to com- mission figures. InnorthernSanDiegoCounty,Fallbrook- based grove manager Charley Wolk said this year’s crop and next year’s are feeling theeffectsof inconsistentweatherearlier in 2021.Somegroves intheareahadnofruit to harvest, he said. “We didn’t have a freeze or anything,” Wolk said. “We just had weather that was not conducive to growing avocados.” That included runs of five to 10 days with be- low-average temperatures, followed by three or four days of above-average days, followed bymore below-average days. “It kept doing that through the spring and the pollination season,” Wolk said. “(With) the fruit that was for this year, that unstable weather plus some windstorms knocked all the fruit on the ground.”
He said the extent of wind damage de- pended onwhichway groves were facing; avocado farms facing west fared better than their eastern-facing counterparts. Thewide temperatureswingsprevented the trees fromgetting into a rhythm. “The trees were confused,” Wolk said. “They didn’t know if it was springtime or winter. The trees didn’t know what to
See AVOCADOS, Page 16
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November 3, 2021 Ag Alert 3
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