The English apple harvest is all but done, most growers have finished picking, save for a few late areas.
At Adrian Scripps, based in Kent, England they did their last picking last Friday, "We finished with our Braeburn, which has remained in very good condition on the trees," said James Simpson, managing director at the company.
"It has possibly been one of the most difficult seasons as far as weather has been concerned. The blossom period was generally cool and dull, although May was one of the warmest on record, the average temperature was mainly due to warmer nights, not good pollinating weather during the day. We had one good weekend at the start of May, that meant growers with good levels of flower at that stage generally set reasonable crops. If growers had little flower, they missed the opportunity to set the crop. The summer was cool with low light levels through the critical period pre-harvest, this has affected sugar levels with some growers and varieties. Harvest has been one of the wettest for many years, this has been reflected across the continent as well."
James said that the wet conditions have made harvest extremely difficult for some growers, reducing the days available to harvest and making orchard conditions very difficult.
"We were expecting the timing of the harvest to be similar to previous years. Fruit did not mature as quickly as we had anticipated and there was quite a variation in maturity on the tree. We believe due to the prolonged flowering period through the dull May."
UK retailers have shown good support for British apples and pears, and James said they are generally pleased with volume now moving, although some retailers have been slower to get programme running than the industry would have liked. Quality is better than expected, with eating experience very good and feedback from consumers has been great.
Adrian Scripps has always been at the forefront when it comes to using the latest technology, they have been working with a number of companies on crop estimation, both through the season and at harvest. "We have been working with Aurea Imaging to develop fruit counting and sizing using their tractor mounted Tree Scout system. We will be comparing this data with data from our bin scanning software provided by Hectre. Using Hectre's cameras we video the top of full bins of fruit to give a size indication prior to loading into store. This has proved to be very accurate. We are also developing a system with B-Hive for our Revo harvesting platforms.
"We have an Innovate UK funded project to develop a fruit scanning system that measures fruit size as well as geo-locating the fruit to the orchard. With this we have developed a size profile of the fruit harvested and a yield and size profile map of the crop in each orchard. This information backs up data from our other devices and allows us the plan field operations while considering crop load across the orchard."
For more information:
James Simpson
Adrian Scripps Ltd
Tel: +44 1892 832406
[email protected]
www.adrianscripps.co.uk