09/14/05 Expanding Idaho table grape industry

Tom Elias was the first commercial grower of Idaho table grapes. Along with other pioneers like Ron Mann of Payette and the University of Idaho's Essie Fallahi, the table grape industry is growing. Elias is president of the expanding Idaho Table Grape Association. ELIAS "This year we've added another 200 acres from various growers. There's nine new growers now. The interest for next year I'm putting in 440 acres for people and myself so. We wanted our goal to be about a thousand acres by 2007 or 08 and we're going to at that thousand acres way before that, probably next year." Elias and the association will help new growers sort out the 70 varieties that Fallahi has experimented with and tried. ELIAS "The Alborz is a fantastic grape, a red grape, offshoot of Flame and its a little more cold tolerant here. Emerald is a tremendous champion. Jupiter is a newer grape that's coming out of Arkansas, it's a black seedless grape, its very, very good, it's going to show some real promise. We've got a couple of Arkansas varieties that are not patented yet that I think are going to do very well for us here. There very big grapes and everything." And the experimentation continues with cluster thinning, cluster cutting and other practices that could lead to other larger, more marketable Idaho grape varieties. Today's Idaho Ag News Bill Scott