Smoked Fruit

The wildfires that once again have ravaged parts of the northwest tree fruit growing regions have caused substantial damage to property and businesses. But according to Bruce Grim, President of the Washington State Hort Association, orchards in the area have come out in pretty good shape.

GRIM: Generally what happens in these situations is that orchards tend to be a pretty good buffer for wildfires because they're irrigated, there's a lot of green things in there. Often times what we see is some singeing or some damages along the edges of orchards. Now I'm hearing that there were some locations that perhaps suffered some serious damage and it would depend on location and it would depend on how much combustible material there was adjacent to the orchard or how much in it.

Many orchardists will stack wooden bins used in collecting the picked fruit around strategic locations in the orchard.

GRIM: We also have heard that some worker housing was pretty well decimated in a number of areas and that of course would cause a concern as the harvest season approaches in terms of where to house those folks.

As for damage to the fruit from being exposed to heavy volumes of smoke, Grim says it doesn't appear to be an issue.

GRIM: We've been through this a number of times but in my own experience as a pear grower I remember back in about 1988 we were harvesting Anjou pears when the fire was across the Entiat River. Other than being a real inconvenience to people out there doing the work, we didn't see that it had any negative impact on the fruit. It didn't affect fruit quality, flavor, anything about it at all.

That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.