September 18, 2015
CapitalPress.com
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Some orchards
seeing 70 percent
‘blanks’
By TIM HEARDEN
Capital Press
DAVIS, Calif. — Pistachio
yields are coming in lighter
than expected as some growers
are encountering more empty
shells than normal because of
the drought and other factors.
At Fiddyment Farms in
Lincoln, Calif., dry conditions
have led to an early harvest,
said Memphis Burton, who
was operating a booth for the
company at a farmers’ market
here.
“They said it’s not going to
yield as much as it has in the
past,” Burton said.
While the pistachio har-
vest normally begins around
Sept. 1, many farms were al-
ready shaking trees and gath-
ering nuts from catch basins
by mid-August, said Richard
Matoian, executive director of
American Pistachio Growers
in Fresno.
What many have found
is an inordinate amount of
“blanks” — fully formed
shells in which a nut never de-
veloped inside, Matoian said.
In a typical season, blanks
might make up 10 percent of a
crop, but in some orchards this
season the number is closer to
70 percent, he said.
A big reason is a lack of
chilling hours in the winter,
which causes the male and
female trees in an orchard to
bloom at different times. An
orchard needs about 800 hours
at below 45 degrees, which
hasn’t happened for two suc-
cessive winters.
“Normally they’d all be
synchronized in what they do”
during bloom, Matoian said.
Because of the uneven blos-
som, “the nutlets don’t get pol-
lenized,” he said.
“No. 2 would be the
drought,” he said. “Lack of
water causes those trees that
are stressed to not fill the shell
with a viable nut.”
The low yields come after
industry insiders had expected
a crop of at least 450 million
pounds, with a possibility of
meeting or surpassing last
year’s 520 million pound crop.
Now growers say the crop
could be as small as 350 mil-
lion pounds.
The light yields are a blip
of sorts amid a winning streak
for pistachios, whose populari-
ty and acreage have ballooned
in recent years. There are now
more than 300,000 acres of
pistachios in the ground, with
225,000 acres bearing, com-
pared to 105,000 bearing acres
in 2005, Matoian said.
Nearly all of the United
States’ pistachio production is
in California, and 97 percent
of that is in the San Joaquin
Valley.
The acreage is booming
despite the drought, largely
because pistachio trees have a
longer life span than other nut
trees and can survive several
years in a row of water stress
even if they don’t produce
nuts, Matoian said.
Matoian believes that once
the orchards receive enough
chilling hours and water in a
season, the state could be in for
a huge pistachio crop.
“We’ve had successive
years of below-normal per-
acre yields due to the lack of
chilling hours and due to the
drought, but I think there’s go-
ing to be a year when we get
a perfect storm, when every-
thing is going to line up and
we’ll have a large crop,” he
said.
‘We’re not there yet, but
the acres are in the ground to
support a huge crop,” he said.
“We just need chilling hours,
we need water and we need to
have sunshine during the sum-
mer months.”
California
El Nino: Wet S. California, dry NW
By TIM HEARDEN
Capital Press
Forecasters say they are
now confident that El Nino’s
southern storms will boost
rainfall this winter as far north
as Sacramento in California,
but the Pacific Northwest will
likely be drier than normal.
Federal Climate Prediction
Center officials said Sept. 10
there’s a 95 percent chance
that strong El Nino conditions
will persist through the winter
before gradually weakening
next spring.
During the winter, odds
favor increased chances for
above-normal
precipitation
across the southern part of the
United States and up the East
Coast, officials said.
But the inland Pacific
Northwest should anticipate
below-normal rainfall, while
the Oregon and Washington
coasts and much of Northern
California have equal chances
of above- or below-average
precipitation, according to the
CPC’s three-month winter out-
NASA via AP
These false-color images provided by NASA satellites compare warm Pacific Ocean water tempera-
tures from the strong El Nino that brought North America large amounts of rainfall in 1997, left, and
the current El Nino as of Aug. 5, right. Warmer ocean water that normally stays in the western Pacific,
shown as lighter orange, red and white areas, moves east along the equator toward the Americas.
Forecasters say this El Nino is already the second strongest on record for this time of year and could
be one of the most potent weather changers in 65 years.
look.
Temperatures throughout
the West are expected to be
higher than normal this winter,
complicating chances for an
abundant snowpack, according
to the outlook.
“One thing to caution a
little bit is that these are prob-
abilistic forecasts,” Mike
Halpert, the center’s deputy
director, told reporters in a
conference call. “We could be
surprised.… There have been
a couple of big El Ninos when
I don’t think it was really dry
anywhere across the country.
Everywhere was above nor-
mal.
“But the most likely case
(in the Northwest) is drier than
average conditions,” he said.
El Nino is a warming of
the ocean at the equator that
interacts with the atmosphere,
changing the jet stream that
drives the winter storm track.
There have been six previous
El Nino periods since 1950,
and this one has the potential
to rate near the top in terms of
strength.
Some scientists have char-
acterized this El Nino as a
“monster” or “Godzilla” storm
track, predicting that it could
produce the kind of wet winter
that California saw in 1982-
83 and 1997-98, when nearly
double the state’s average pre-
cipitation fell.
However, Halpert said such
descriptions are “not helpful”
as state and federal officials
have worked to tamp down
expectations that this winter
could end the drought. State
Climatologist Michael Ander-
son reiterated Sept. 10 that past
El Nino events have produced
mixed results in Northern Cal-
ifornia, where key reservoirs
are situated.
Conditions ripe for big navel orange crop
By TIM HEARDEN
Capital Press
SACRAMENTO — Grow-
ers and the USDA are bracing
for a drought-defying bumper
crop of navel oranges in the
2015-2016 season.
The National Agricultur-
al Statistics Service’s initial
navel orange forecast is 86
million cartons, up more than
8 percent from last season’s
76 million cartons harvested,
even with at least 2,000 few-
er acres of bearing trees in the
ground.
While California Citrus
Mutual, a growers’ group with
more than 2,000 members,
argued that last year’s NASS
initial prediction of 81 mil-
lion cartons was too high, the
group mostly agrees with this
forecast.
“It wasn’t too much of a
surprise given what we’ve
been hearing from the guys in
the field and observing,” said
Bob Blakely, vice president of
the Exeter-based Citrus Mutu-
al. “The unknown in there is
knowing how much acreage
has actually been taken out
(because of a lack of water).
They’ve said it’s 2,000 acres.
“Most of our growers feel
like they’re seeing more fruit
on the trees and the size is bet-
ter,” Blakely said. “Combining
the two of those factors, it does
look like the crop is going to
be a little bit up from last year.”
The big crop estimate is
fueled by reports that fruit size
is larger and fruit set, especial-
ly on late varieties, is better
in most groves, according to
Citrus Mutual. The improved
fruit size is attributed to time-
ly rainfall and good growing
conditions fol-
lowing petal fall
last spring, the
group explains.
As a strong
El Nino is ex-
pected to bring
Blakely
more rain than
normal this win-
ter in the San Joaquin Valley,
early rains could result in ad-
ditional growth that would
equate to more cartons, Citrus
Mutual states.
NASS’ survey indicated a
fruit set per tree of 412, above
the five-year average of 336,
and the average Sept. 1 diam-
eter was at 2.248 inches, above
the five-year average of 2.23
inches.
Warm temperatures this
summer improved the oranges’
brix, or sugar content, raising
hopes for good flavor, Citrus
Mutual explained. The harvest
is expected to begin in early
October.
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