Warm nights delay apple harvest in Okanagan

Wildfire smoke prevents cooling at night that brings out colour in fruit

It’s not the smoky days but the warm nights that most concern Okanagan apple growers on the eve of the 2018 harvest.

Orchardists count on cooler temperatures at night in late August to begin bringing out the vivid colour in apples, increasing the fruit’s appeal to consumers and thus boosting returns to growers.

But with nighttime temperatures running a couple degrees above normal, the colour conversion has yet to start in many apple orchards.

“It’ll be a huge concern if we don’t see the overnight conditions start to drop down a bit,” BC Fruit Growers’ Association president Pinder Dhaliwal said Monday.

“Right now, it seems like the smoke is sort of acting like a blanket, keeping temperatures at night a few degrees above normal,” Dhaliwal said.

Summer-ripening apple varieties like Sunrise and Ginger Gold are already being taken off the trees, but the big Okanagan harvest, beginning with varieties like Gala, is currently forecast to begin Aug. 28 or 29.

In the South Okanagan, the overnight low this month has averaged 16.2 C, compared to the normal of 14 C.

In the Central Okanagan, nighttime temperatures have averaged 14.2 C, compared to the normal of 13 C.

The temperature spread may seem slight, but it doesn’t necessarily reflect the conditions that are actually occurring on Okanagan orchards, Dhaliwal says.

“What I’m hearing from growers is the colour break they would expect to see now hasn’t happened yet,” he said. “Everyone wants to get that nice, colourful glow on their apples, and it’s not there right now.”

About 3,200 hectares of land in the Okanagan is planted with apples, down from about 8,100 ha in the early 1990s.

Most farmers have not been fully paid for their 2017 crop, as the money comes in separate payments that can stretch out over a year. Returns to growers depend on such things as the colour and size of their fruit, as well as the overall size of the harvest both in Canada and the United States.

Some initial projections on pricing for this year’s crop are expected in the next two weeks, Dhaliwal said.

Daily Courier file photo Still-green apples hang from trees in an orchard in Kelowna in this photo from July 2017. Warm nights due to smoke are delaying the colour break for apples this year, says BC Fruit Growers’ Association president Pinder Dhaliwal.