More On Pear Crop Estimate

More On Pear Crop Estimate. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

The 2014 per crop is not expected to be as large as last years crop according to the latest estimate. Cristie Mather, Director of Communications with Pear Bureau Northwest explains why.

MATHER: What we saw last year due to nice hot summer days right at harvest time , the pears themselves, the individual pears actually plumped up and got really huge and that’s what contributed to the record crop last year. Just we had a lot of really big pears. And this year we are seeing a decrease as we expected due to the cyclical nature of pear tree production that we’re seeing more of a typical size crop.

About 30% of the crop last year was size 70 and larger which are considered jumbo pears. While there still be be a lot of pears from all varieties some specific varieties are down more.

MATHER: This year we’re looking at a decrease compared again with the record crop of last year of about 14% in the Green Anjou production but it’s still only 8% below the five-year average as we’re projecting today. Our industry is going to meet again in August when we have a little bit more time to assess what is happening out in the orchard and at that time we’re going to come back together and with reconfirm or update this estimate.

The latest total projection is showing approximately 18.7 million standard 44-lb box equivalents of pears for the fresh market which is 6% smaller than the five-year average, and 13% smaller than last year’s record crop.

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