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California: Extreme heat could damage crop

29/06/2017

2017 Season
François-Xavier Branthôme
CTGA
California,
North America
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“We have to wait until harvest to know the effect of heatwave”
 
Growers of processing tomatoes are waiting to see whether the recent heatwave in California has caused extensive damage to a crop that is already diminished because of a global glut of the fruit. It will be weeks, if not months, before they can fully assess the impacts of the late spring/early summer heatwave that affected many of the state's agricultural regions.
 
A week or more of triple-digit Fahrenheit temperatures starting 16 June may have caused flowers to drop off younger plants, and sunburned or stunted the growth of more mature fruit, according to Bruce Rominger, a California tomato grower and board chairman of the California Tomato Growers Association. “I’m sure this heat we just came out of probably hurt” the crop, Rominger said. "I think we're likely to see some reduced yields, based on blossom drop or smaller fruit, and possibly sunburn.”
He added that the degree of damage will become more apparent during the harvest later in the summer. Some tomatoes are only a couple of weeks from harvest, while others were planted around the beginning of June and remain young. Rominger underlined that the key is consistent irrigation. "You can't all of a sudden irrigate more and make up for it," he said. "You just have to keep the same irrigations to make sure the plant has the moisture."
Rominger pointed out that he will not know how his tomatoes have fared until they reach the processing plant. "We have to wait until harvest," he said. "We know there will be some effect. We don't know the scale of it."
 

The duration of the heat is the main factor in tomato damage, according to Gene Miyao, a University of California Cooperative Extension farm advisor. "It's not just hitting a temperature spike for half an hour," Miyao said. "That isn't as problematic as having hours on end of these hundred-degree-plus temperatures."
He stated that the main damage will come from plants losing flower blooms because of a lack of wind pollination. "Some of the plants could recover a bit, but if they're in this plant-growth stage of the most abundant flowers on the vines, then recovering from that is unlikely," Miyao said.
 
He credited tomato-plant breeders with developing varieties better able to withstand heat, and said the recent weather could help them refine their research.
"If there's some good things that can come out of it, I'd say we're going to get the potential for identifying heat-tolerant varieties, to a degree," Miyao said.
 
Growers are already expected to record their lowest contracted production since 2006, as processors reported earlier this year they would have contracts for 11.6 million short tons (10.7 million metric tonnes), according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service.
Processors expect that production this summer to come from 235 000 acres, the lowest contracted acreage since 1988 and a 10% decrease from 2016, NASS reports.
 
Rominger pointed out that weather had already complicated this year’s crop before the summer began, as rain in April disrupted planting. During the heatwave, some northern areas topped 110 degrees (°F, or 43.3°C) on several successive days.
 
Sources: California Farm Bureau Federation, CapitalPress, June 2017
 
 
 

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