The FruITGrOwer •
December 2016
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OPINION
THE FRUIT GROWER IS PUBLISHED BY
We reach the end of an extraordinary year in terms of political events with precious few
certainties as towhere it will all take us in the coming years. In his first comment column
for The Fruit Grower, Andrew Tinsley ranges widely over many aspects of what faces our
industry and speculates what the effects will be. At least the high summer temperatures
and autumnweather weremostly favourable to fruit growers, with berry growers
generally happier with results when comparedwith the previous year. The top-fruit
harvest, although late due to the cold spring (is this a trend?), wasmore pleasant as the
dry warmweather held, and this certainly benefited the grape harvest andwinemakers.
The professionalism of our research community was demonstrated at this year’s
EMRA/AHDBSoft Fruit Day. Scientists now have to be good presenters and
communicators and this ability was fully on display from both established and young
researchers. NIAB EMR’s Dr Michelle Fountainwarned that SWD is established and that
numbers continue to build. We’ve not reached the full carrying capacity of the pest in the
UK, and in future other regions could experience the same pattern as the south-east
over the last four years. The establishment of IPM in crops has becomemore difficult
due to the unintended consequences of controlling SWD, but several projects are in
place to come upwith ideas to keep the use of natural enemies and predators effective
asmethods of control. A full report from the Soft Fruit Day will appear in the January
issue.
Taking the National Fruit Show competition fruit toDEFRA’s HQ for their Healthy Harvest
Festival was again a great way to keep our industry at centre-stage inWhitehall. As usual
much of the success was down to the small team of volunteers. Amongst thesewas
JohnGuest, whose English AppleManwebsite andweekly Journal make excellent
reading if youwant detailed and entertaining reports on industry events. In this issue of
The Fruit Grower he reports on an innovative Kent distillerymaking use of waste fruit.
Apparently British growers plant nearly all their trees inNovember andDecember while
Dutch growers plant in both the autumn and spring. A report from one of the largest fruit
tree nurseries in the Netherlands explains how harvesting the trees and rootstocks keeps
100 people busy fromOctober toChristmas.
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C O N T E N T S
News
Page 4
Healthy Harvest
Festival
Page 5
Great Fruit
Adventure
Page 7
GrowQuip
Page 10
Comment
Page 11
Tree nursery
Page 12
Polytunnels
Page 15
Storage and
refrigeration
Page 17
Cherries
Page 20
Research Briefing Page 24
Fruit distillery
Page 25
LION HOUSE, CHURCH STREET
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D
ecember
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