Keeping A Close Eye On New Tree Fruit Pests

Spring this year seems about as slow as political progress. We can complain about both, but no one seems to be able to do much about either. This spring seems particularly tough for the nation’s tree fruit growers, and worth complaining about even if we can’t do all that much.

We’ve seen tornadoes and floods nationally, and a cold wet spring in the Pacific Northwest. We have suffered delays in orchard cleanup, planting, and early season sprays. We also suffered through a couple significant cold events over winter, so we started off quite trepidatious about tree health and bud/spur viability.

Some were also quite hopeful these events might eradicate or at least slow down our spotted wing drosophila (SWD) populations, but I think we must battle this new pest as if it were already a permanent resident. At least we have a couple years to get used to this one before brown marmorated stink bug (BMSB) comes knocking.

It’s interesting how both SWD and BMSB make their way into almost any conversation with tree fruit producers these days, and they certainly merit the concern, but back to the weather. Our lousy pollinating conditions, which kept honeybees in their hives and orchardists in their pick-ups, have made estimating crop load and necessary management decisions more challenging than ever, but there seems to be general agreement we will not be picking record crops in apple, cherry, pear, or soft fruit.

Smaller Crops

As a long-time advocate of early and aggressive thinning in apples, which means bloom thinners for the Pacific Northwest, I am distressed caution will prevail and we will harvest both a smaller total crop and a lot of smaller sizes. The unusually late and intense precipitation events have filled up the snowpack in Western mountain ranges, so perhaps we will avoid, if only temporarily, the increasingly contentious water use issue.

It appears harvest will also be significantly delayed up and down the West Coast. This messes up planning for marketing, storage, and handling, so all in all, not a great way to start the year.

On the other hand, prices for both apples and pears have held strong, inventories are cleaning up, and consumers seem eager to keep purchasing Honeycrisp at levels that actually return money to the producer. In addition, and just as positive, there is an outstanding example of bipartisan agreement on important legislation.

That example is the 2008 Farm Bill. Within that legislation are provisions enhancing our investment in research, Extension, marketing, and promotion activities for specialty crops, as well as for programs expanding the supply of specialty crops and products to school lunch and nutritional assistance programs. An umbrella group of commodity and trade organizations, the Specialty Crop Farm Bill Alliance (SCFBA), deserves principal credit for motivating Congress to get the job done.

Research Is Critical

Readers of this publication will know that I have specifically championed the Specialty Crop Research Initiative (SCRI), one of the Farm Bill’s mandated funding provisions. This year is the fourth cycle of that program and I was privileged to manage the peer review panels that evaluated this year’s proposals. Especially gratifying was the fact that a third of the panelists comprised industry stakeholders.

The SCRI is highly competitive. In in the past three years only around 15% of applications have been funded, so the review panel is faced with an extraordinary challenge — identifying proposals that both address stakeholder priorities and have the technical quality to maximize chances of scientific success and ultimately, economic impact. Industry stakeholder panelists provided analysis and insights that splendidly complemented scientists on the panel who came from universities and federal organizations.

Still, it was an arduous process, with abundant, yet civil, debate. Panelists set aside allegiance to a particular crop, or geographic region, or scientific discipline. Strict conflict of interest rules are followed, and the identity of panelists is kept confidential, so the process retains credibility and objectivity. In a way, it is the antithesis of earmarking. Winning projects are funded based on an independent panel’s recommendations for relevance and quality.

Facing Budgetary Challenges

In my mind, this highly competitive process, along with the SCRI’s requirement that all federal dollars are matched with funding from other sources (e.g. commodity groups, universities, private sector), makes this program exceptionally impactful for industries and the communities across the country where they operate. I hope it also makes the SCRI more attractive to policymakers as they face horrific budgetary challenges.

The Farm Bill is re-written every five years. Putting together the next Farm Bill may be delayed, to some degree a victim of partisan wrangling, but I sincerely hope the SCRI is at least maintained.

The SCFBA will be representing us as we attempt to communicate the short- and long-term benefits of the SCRI investments in research and extension activities. Please support them.

So, while we face the vicissitudes of weather without being able to do much, I am gratified to acknowledge we can indeed succeed with game-changing legislation. Thanks to the politicians, USDA administrators, and review panelists that have made it happen, in partnership with specialty crop industries.

And, yes, there is an SCRI project focused on SWD. We hope those results come as quickly as possible, so we have one less thing to worry about this crop season.