Researchers nationwide say milder winters are inducing earlier flowering, exposing blooms and nascent fruit to increasingly erratic frosts, hail and other adverse weather. Breeders are struggling to develop new varieties.
By Adrian Higgins Adrian Higgins Gardening columnist Email Bio Follow March 28 at 7:00 AM In Mark Demuth’s research orchard in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the peach tree twigs glow a soft red-brown under the strengthening late winter sun. The peaches are emerging from hibernation, he says, as he points out which of the stirring buds will open as leaves and which as blossoms come early April.
Spring blossom freezes in Kearneysville “would happen before, occasionally,” said Demuth, a research technician. “But to have it happen in back-to-back-to-back years, it’s never happened before in the 23 years I’ve been doing this here. To lose four years in a row? Yeah, heartbreaking.” In 2002, tart cherry growers in Michigan suffered large freeze-related losses to their crop but considered the disaster a once-in-a-century event. In 2012, trees began breaking dormancy more than five weeks early, followed by a freeze. The state’s cherry harvest that year tanked to just under 12 million pounds, compared with a more normal 158 million pounds in 2011, according to Agriculture Department statistics. Michigan produces two-thirds of the nation’s tart cherries.
Trees that are insufficiently chilled bloom poorly and sporadically. The fruit quality is compromised, and trees may become so stressed that they die, scientists say. Some long-winter varieties in South Carolina did not leaf out last year after two mild winters. “That was alarming to us and to growers because we hadn’t seen it before,” said Ksenija Gasic, a peach hybridizer at Clemson University.
A 2009 study funded by the California Department of Food and Agriculture determined that in 1950, growers in the Central Valley could rely on between 700 and 1,200 chilling hours, but by 2000 that had declined by up to 30 percent in some areas. Some researchers say growers in the Central Valley eventually may have to consider moving farther north or to higher elevations to produce the same crops.
In 2012, the apples had met their chilling needs when the late winter saw a relative heat wave. “The blooms progressed much earlier than we had ever seen before,” she said. An underlying worry, he said, is that fruit breeding programs will not be able to keep pace with rapid climate change. It can take 15 to 30 years to create a new commercial apple or peach variety from scratch.
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