Farmer's Weekly (South Africa)
‘South Africa has shown enormous capacity to mitigate the risk of CBS …’
– The director of the Citrus Growers’ Association, Jan- Louis Pretorius, berating EU officials for being unwilling to acknowledge South Africa’s success in minimising the risk of citrus black spot entering the region
Apple production in the eastern Free State is expected to increase by 10% in the coming season, according to Hein Punt, packhouse manager at Maluti Fruit, an apple packhouse near Bethlehem in the Free State.
Speaking to Farmer’s Weekly, Punt said the 2018 apple harvest was large for the area, with about 5 000t harvested. In 2017, the harvest was relatively poor at about 2 700t, which was due to two weeks of constant rain at a critical production phase. This resulted in poor colour, especially for the Pink Lady variety, which showed below average colour development due to a lack of sun exposure because of the cloud cover. It also led to above average incidences of bruising.
The expected increase was partly as a result of the absence of frost that usually occurred during spring. Current observations also indicated that fruit sizes could be larger for the eastern Free State harvest this year, Punt said. The apple production area was still expanding, with many young trees coming into production, he added.
“This year we had normal climatic conditions during flowering, and the areas’ cold incidents weren’t as punishing as last year. Such a large yield will, however, place the eastern Free State’s infrastructure under some pressure,” Punt said.
Apples from the eastern Free State were mostly exported to the Middle East and Far East markets, as well as Bangladesh, he added.
Punt said Pink Lady apples were currently very popular in the local market followed by red apple varieties, while producer prices ranged from a high of about R140/box to as low as R80/ box.
Nina Viljoen, agricultural economist at Hortgro, said the total 2018 apple export estimate indicated a decrease of 7% compared with 2017 exports. This amounted to about 31,2 million 12,5kg-equivalent cartons, compared with 33,4 million the previous season. According to Viljoen, about 4,6 million cartons of Golden Delicious apples were exported to countries elsewhere in Africa during this year, followed by Asia and the UK.
The latter imported about 6,2 million cartons during the 2018 season. – Gerhard Uys