10/25/05 Quality, not quantity for onion harvest

Its quality not quantity this year for Idaho and Malheur County, Oregon onion growers. Champion Produce's John Wong says this year's smaller crop can be blamed in part on the weather, starting back in the fall of 2004. WONG "And a lot of the guys didn't get their ground work done up as they would normally and there was a lot of compaction because it was so wet in the fall and this wet spring kind of led to the same situation of having compaction issues and also getting the crop up and growing a little bit late because of all the rain and the cool weather that we had in the spring of 2005." Wong and other growers also saw the impact that iris yellow spot virus had on onion yields. WONG "It affected some fields a lot worse than other fields and its carried by the thrip insect, it is the carrier of the disease so to speak or the virus. Mainly what I have seen that it does it just shuts the plant down to where the plant doesn't finish its sizing so you end up consequently with smaller onions, therefore also a lot smaller yields or lighter yields." But onion demand is steady and with a smaller crop this year prices are up. Wong says 50 pound bags of jumbo yellow onions are selling for seven dollars and that's about double the price last year. Today's Idaho Ag News Bill Scott