LOW chill stone fruit growers on the North Coast have seen their market window shrink by more than half as a result of increased fruit from southern growers - particularly the Riverina and imports from America early in the season.
Where once early season nectarines and peaches provided a sub tropical producer a good living, these days the boom has busted and those remaining are mostly old and over it.
That’s not to say that Robert and Robyn Hood are past producing some of the most perfect fruit on the Sydney floor. Far from it.
But the joy of reward just isn’t there. For instance last year’s bountiful harvest brought significantly reduced profits when prices crashed by 30 per cent after climate conspired to ripen sub-tropical products at the same time as those from the Sydney Basin and Riverina.
Add to that the challenge of producing a blemish-free product after the ban of Fenthion.
“There is change all the time,” says Robert. “Too much change is no good.”
After 26 good years of making a respectable income off just 4ha of intensively managed stone fruit on red basalt soil, the Hoods saw this new reality approaching and decided to adjust the timing of fruit picking by planting new varieties.
They invested in a proprietary variety owned by Zee Sweet called Polar Light, pulling out 600 trees that produced late fruit and replacing them with the new variety grafted on to wild domestic peach rootstock, to better suit local conditions.
“With less than six to eight weeks to make a year’s income this variety should consolidate losses from the removal of the later varieties,” said Robert.
“The supply and demand relationship is crazy,” says Robyn. “When our fruit tastes the best we get the least for them.”
Having said that the Hoods have maintained some old time low chill favourites, developed by Bangalow nurseryman Lyle Wright from US budwood – varieties like Sunwright and Tropic Beauty which still make up more than half the orchard.
Fortunately for the Hoods they easily understand the ways of ‘Prunus persica’ so named because the better it is pruned post harvest the greater the reward next season - provided the job is done correctly.
In fact a more experienced pruner on greater pay saves the Hood family a considerable amount of net return.
“We have gone away from heavy pruning in summer,” said Robert. “The more you prune the later you get your harvest and we need to meet that early window.”
New varieties, pest vigilance, key to future
LOW chill stone-fruit growers are now adjusting to their first pre-harvest without the fruit fly spray Fenthion and are frustrated by increased plantings of earlier-maturing high-chill varieties in the Riverina, which has reduced their market window to just six to eight weeks through October.
But Nambour-based fruit breeder Dr Bruce Topp, University of Queensland, says new varieties hold the key to sub-tropical growers retaining market share.
The big low chill growers have moved west, anticipating the Fenthion ban, notes Dr Topp, to work country at Kumbia south-west of Kingaroy. Some medium chill growers have set up operations at Rosemary Hill, on traprock west of Stanthorpe.
But the options for coastal sub-tropical growers are limited, with their pest pressure undiminished.
“Management in coastal production is more difficult,” he says “Growers need to be spot-on with baiting as well as trapping for Queensland fruit fly along with their use of allowed cover sprays.”
Dr Topp says new low chill varieties could play a key role in producing fruit with improved firmness for less wastage – in some cases up to 30 per cent loss from fruit that is bruised.
The flip side to firmness has been eating quality but Dr Topp says new varieties like the all-yellow ‘nectacot’, and a yellow-fleshed peach and nectarine, all promise an eating experience that will bring consumers of low chill fruit back to market next year.
Of course propriety varieties like Zee Sweet’s Polar Light, planted by the Hood family of Newrybar, are extremely popular right now for those same reasons.
“Along the coast there will still be good profits to be made from low chill fruit if growers hit that October period market,” said Dr Topp.