06/11/07 Managing Your Harvest

Managing Your Harvest. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. Having the ability of being able to control harvest time give a producer a lot of control and with a product like Retain by Valent USA, that control is readily available according to Valent Brand Manager, Steve Slaveck. SLAVECK: You get about a 7 to 10 day delay in when that fruit ripens and that allows growers to first of all schedule their harvest a little better when they put it on they can essentially know that that fruit is going to mature and be ready to pick within a certain window that they've now managed. Slaveck explains exactly what Retain is and how it works for producers. SLAVECK: Retain is a naturally occurring growth hormone and what it does is it suppresses or delays the production of ethylene in plants and ethylene is a growth hormone and is most notable with the maturation process. It's what causes apple to fall off trees, it what causes them to ripen. So by slowing or delaying that process it gives you more control of where you can pick. According to Slaveck, there is another benefit to delaying the ripening process. SLAVECK: As you hang that fruit on the tree a little longer, it does continue to grow and so it's not uncommon particularly for the smaller size varieties like a Gala, it's not uncommon that growers get some size benefits and we see that like I said in Gala's but also in Red's and Granny's and some of the other varieties as well where you can pick up some fruit size and overall yield from the extra hangtime on the tree. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.