Just seven days ago the team at Global Fruit was seeing the very first flowers starting to emerge, and right now the majority of orchards have blossomed. “Most likely, in 80 percent of British Columbia’s main cherry regions, pollination has completed,” says Richard Isaacs with Global Fruit. Just a few orchards in the north Okanagan valley, some at higher elevation, and those in the Creston valley are yet to reach 100 percent blossom.
"Conditions have been fantastic, with warm dry days and no cold temperatures overnight, so the bees have been getting busy and we are extremely optimistic about the potential pollination."
Whilst the blossom started two weeks later compared to 2022, warm weather and all the flowers opening in a matter of a few days this year, means we have probably caught up some of the time. No doubt the same is true in Washington state, where the weather was also warm, resulting in a fast blossom.
"It is still too early to make accurate predictions about the exact start and end dates for this coming season, but it is unlikely there will be a full two-week delay in the Pacific Northwest or British Columbia," said Isaacs. "Even when a season starts late, it never carries the same number of days all the way to the end. Ten days later starting doesn’t mean ten days later finishing."
The good news about this quick blossom is that all the flowers have opened and hopefully been pollinated in the space of just a few days. This means that cherries arriving into the packing houses will have very similar colour and brix levels. No risk of the mixed maturity that occurs in an orchard when blossom is stretched out over 2+ weeks as it was in 2022.
In a few weeks, little green cherries should be visible on the trees and a little bit more information should be available about possible start dates.
For more information:
Global Fruit
Commercial Director
Tel: +1 (250) 254 1241
richard@globalfruit.org
Asia Sales
Tel: +1 (250) 644-5235
jingtian@globalfruit.org
EU & ME Sales
Tel: +1 (250) 254-9623
marcos@globalfruit.org
US Sales
Tel: +1 (250) 402-8603
tim@globalfruit.org
https://www.globalfruit.org/