Fruit & Vegetable Magazine

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Cool autumn weather great for Okanagan apple crop

November 3, 2018  By Fruit and Vegetable magazine


Photo courtesy of Stan Jones, Dreamstime.com.

Okanagan orchardists are just wrapping up what looks to be a bumper crop for apples this season.

“We didn’t get the intensive heat in September and October this year,” B.C. Fruit Growers Association general manager Glen Lucas told iNFOnews.ca. “When it cools off, that helps colour the apples and condition the apples, which makes sure they’re a larger size and crisper.”

If it’s too hot in the fall, as it was in 2017, the apples can actually stop growing. Smaller apples result in an overall smaller crop and lower prices.

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Last year, the price to growers dropped from an average of about 25 cents a pound to 19. Those lower prices have persisted into this season but Lucas expects the prices to rise as the bigger apples start selling.

Four apple varieties make up about 80 per cent of the Okanagan’s 180 million pound apple crop with Gala by far the most popular at about 74 million lbs.| READ MORE


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