Volume-wise it has been an "average-plus" year for peaches and nectarines, says Pierre de Wet estate manager of Romansrivier in the Breede River Valley, but the Packham pear harvest is very light. "We prefer a cooler October for fruit set but instead last October we had quite a lot of hot weather. We saw it coming. Early BCs and Cheekys don't look too bad, but Packhams are down."
Not only on Packhams, but also plums (some Angeleno blocks elsewhere in the Breede River valley have not yielded a single plum this season) and the Boland blueberries harvested in December were all unusually light, for a combination of climatic reasons in turn leading to pollination problems.
"Everybody in the valley is talking about the low yields. Climate change is definitely with us. We usually got cold April and May many years ago. Old grain farmers tell you that they planted their wheat on Easter weekend. Nowadays they can't, there's no rain. It's as if the whole pattern shifted a little bit."
The Western Cape has had a simultaneous marked increase in the frequency and severity of floods.
"In 2023 a 200-year-old flood line in the Breede River was exceeded by half a meter of flood water," he says. And then, in 2024 another flood, even worse: "Last year's flood jumped by a meter over the previous year's record. There was a lot of damage downstream in the Robertson area."
The Western Cape is a Mediterranean climate and as such fire is always a risk during summer, and this year has been the same, resulting in high fruit fly pressure. "With all the fires, there's no natural habitat for them, so fruit fly is a big issue this season, but we saw it coming," he says. Graaff Fruit releases sterilized fruit fly males from the industry-owned Fruit Fly South Africa initiative in Citrusdal. He observes that the farm's chemical usage has become heavily circumscribed. They stick to spray protocols as they stick to the Bible, he says. "If you don't stick to that, you're in trouble. If we are to be sustainable and stay in the market, we have to adapt and adhere to protocols."
Pierre de Wet, estate manager of Romansrivier, a Graaff Fruit farm near Wolseley
New varieties bring higher tonnage
The Upper Breede Valley around Wolseley is well-known for its nectarines (recently 25 hectares of Packhams were pulled up to make way for more stonefruit) and Romansrivier experiences a warmer winter than lower-lying farms surrounding it, resulting in early stonefruit.
"My orchards are all under shade net for the wind. We're very prone to wind. We joke that the wind was born here. The wind cools down our temperatures in summer, when it's a bit cooler here on the farm and it makes a huge difference in the ripening of the fruit."
They need to adapt to lower chill varieties, that much has become clear. "Seven years ago Luciana was one of the best-performing varieties, [now] I want to chop it down, I want to take it out. It gets what we call 'buttons' because of a lack of cold, I'm not getting the cold in the slot where I need to get."
New varieties distinguish themselves from older ones primarily in their tonnage. Regarding packouts there is not an enormous difference between old and new varieties, he says. "Eighty percent [packout] on 15 tonnes is not the same as 80% on 40 tonnes, and that's where we can make a difference. That's the only way we can be sustainable: we have to get more tonnage and more class one fruit in a class one export carton."
Now varieties are changing so quickly – and for the better, he adds – that "you have to adapt as a farmer, otherwise you will stay behind." It takes around fifteen years to pay back the investment, which explains the imperative to produce more of better quality in a shorter time. "It used to be that a tree started bearing at three years: now we start a year earlier, but first you have to, as we call it, build a tree."
Cracking the flat peach/nectarine nut
Luckily, he remarks, stonefruit varieties keep getting better with time and in his opinion, Spanish breeder PSB's stonefruit programme Buffalo Fruit is among the best. On Romansrivier they are trialling PSB's Flopria apricot.
Flat peaches and flat nectarines are a nut South African stonefruit growers have not been able to crack: in fact, cracking has been the problem until now on flat peach and flat nectarines in South African orchards. Possibly as a result of temperature, possibly as a result of high levels of ultraviolet radiation, but Rossouw believes he has the first successful flat peach.
"I'll be the first producer to plant a one-hectare of Zodiac flat peach and next year, we'll start seeing fruit on the flat nectarine trial blocks we planted."
For more information:
Pierre de Wet
Romansrivier
Tel: +27 23 004 0124
Email: pierre@graaff-fruit.com
https://graaff-fruit.com/