Convened by Dr. Stefano Musacchi, WSU hosted the International Society for Horticultural Science (ISHS) XII Orchard Systems Symposium in July 2021. The symposium was virtual so Stefano and TJ Mullinax from the Good Fruit Grower filmed orchard visits where Stefano and producers provided industry overviews and discussed orchard systems and production strategies. In the apple video, Suzanne Bishop, Dave Gleason, Mike VanPelt, and Dale Goldy host an orchard stop.
Text Transcript and Description of Visuals:
| Audio | Visual |
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| Good morning everybody. | The logo for the Orchard Systems 2021 conference appears on screen. Showing a fruit tree growing out of a test tube. |
| Today we are in Naches, close to Yakima, another important area of production of apple. We are with Ines Hanrahan, the director of the Washington Tree Fruit Research Commission. So Ines, can you address the importance and the consistency of our apple industry? | Two people stand, facing each other, in the row of an apple orchard. Text on screen shows their names: “Stephano Musacchi” and “Ines Hanrahan” as well as their current location: “Naches Valley, Washington”. |
| Sure, absolutely. Here in Washington State, we grow apples on the east side of the Cascade Mountain range. So that goes from the Canadian border, all the way down to the Oregon border. | |
| We have the main growing areas here in the Yakima Valley, and in the Columbia Basin, but we also have minor growing areas in Wenatchee, and, of course, up the Okanagan, and around the Tri-City areas. So apple’s all over. The crop is typically worth about two billion dollars, so that’s quite a large number. | A camera shot moves slowly down an apple orchard row in a vast orchard. White netting is seen above each row of trees. |
| And what is our acreage? We typically refer to it as acreage. So we have about 175,000 acres of apples right now. That would be approximately, in hectares, 71,000 hectares. The production volume, of course it varies by year, but typically it’s about 2 million tons, okay? And we refer to it though as 122 million bushel boxes, 40 pound bushel boxes. That’s the measurement we use in the U.S typically for apples. | The camera shot switches back to Ines and Stephano standing in the orchard row. |
| Okay, and can you address also a little bit about the variety that we are growing in Washington? The major one? | The camera zooms out slightly to show more of the orchard row along with Ines and Stephano. |
| Yeah, sure. I think everybody probably realizes the Red Delicious, it’s our flagship variety. Red Delicious and Gala together are 50 percent of our production volume. Red Delicious, of course, is still very popular in our export markets, and Gala is our standard variety that is really popular in the American market. | The camera moves closer to Ines and Stephano. |
| And you have other varieties, in any case, because I can list probably 60 varieties in Washington right now. So can you address a little bit more about the other varieties? | |
| Sure, about 30 percent of our production volume is split just about evenly between three varieties. That’s Granny Smith, a tart apple, Honeycrisp that is really popular here in the U.S. it’s very crispy and crunchy, and has a very unique flavor profile, and then we, of course, still have Fuji, which is one of our export apples. Then this profile gets rounded out by Cripps Pink, and we also still have some Golden Delicious in our portfolio, but I would say, more or less, ten percent. And the growing segment, exponentially growing segment, is the club varieties and our own Cosmic Crisp apple that also has increasing acreage and will make it into the top five in the next couple of years. | |
| Okay, so can you tell us a little bit about the consistency of the new plantation of WA 38? A new big number, you know? | |
| Yes, so this has been very well taken up by the industry. So there is millions of trees, tens of millions of trees being planted. So this is basically the fastest growing apple variety in the world right now. So it’s a big experiment, but we are very excited because we do know it’s a very good apple. We’re very hopeful that this will create a good solution for the Washington industry to have a good tasting apple in the market that can store very long. Which is really important for our industry, to have an apple that can be supplied year around at a consistent flavor. That’s really exciting for the consumers, of course, as well, to get an apple that actually is edible. | The camera person shifts closer to Ines as she speaks. |
| This is great. So what about the rootstocks, because this is a symposium also on rootstocks? So what are the trends of rootstocks in Washington? | The camera angle shifts to have Ines and Stephano center frame. |
| Yeah, I would say we prefer M9 size type rootstocks here in Washington. So a lot of M9 clones are still being planted, but we also have some smaller wood stocks like Bud Nine or Mark, The Geneva series, of course is very popular, especially because of the replant resistance, early apple aphid resistance, and some of the fire blight resistance. Most years actually demand, I would raise what actual nurseries can produce. | |
| Okay, perfect. Thank you. | A camera shot moves slowly down a long apple orchard row, then focuses in on a cluster of apples growing on one of the trees. |
| Today we are here with Suzanne Bishop of Allen Bros. She is the research and development manager. | |
| We are in an orchard of Honeycrisp. Can you describe a little bit, the training system in the year of the planting of the orchard? So give us some details about this nice orchard? | Two people stand, facing each other, in the row of an apple orchard. Text on screen shows their names: “Stephano Musacchi” and “Suzanne Bishop” as well as their current location: “Naches Valley, Washington”. |
| Yes, so as you mentioned, this is a Honeycrisp block. This block was grafted over in 2006. And so the structure here is a Y-trellis, so it starts with the trunk at the base, and then it turns into a V as it gets higher up. | The camera pans to Suzanne as she gestures to the trees, which are Y-shaped, with two sections coming off of the main trunk. |
| So if I count correctly, you got seven wires and probably 14 permanent branches that layout horizontally. So how do you manage the structure of the tree, and how do you manage the crop load and the thinning in this tree? | Stephano points to the wires of the trellis structure. |
| Yeah, so a lot of this work was before I started at Allen Brothers, but basically it’s just a process of, as the tree is growing we pick ideal limbs. We generally try to fold the limbs down onto the wire, which reduces the vigor and kind of puts the branches in more of a fruiting mode, which is helpful. Thinning is definitely important in Honeycrisp because it is very sensitive to biennial bearing. It’s also tricky just because Honeycrisp likes to grow really large. | The camera zooms out slightly to show the entire height of the trees. |
| So what we do is, we do a combination of chemical bloom thinning, and then we also do some post bloom thinners, but then we follow up with hand thinning too. I’ve been doing a lot of work trying to figure out how we can reduce how many times that we can come in to the orchard in order to reduce that crop load. So that might be things like artificial spur extinction or bloom thinning, things like that. Just trying to get in earlier, set that crop load earlier, so we don’t have to spend as much labor earlier or later on in the process. | The camera moves around the tree, showing the leaves, branches, and fruit. |
| So one specification, what is the most important thinning strategy that are you using? Lime sulfur? | The camera shot switches back to Suzanne and Stephano standing in the orchard row. |
| Yep, lime sulfur. | |
| Lime sulfur at bloom, in general. So then you follow with the chemical spray, and hand thinning if the chemical doesn’t give you the result that you are looking for? | |
| Exactly, and sometimes with Honeycrisp we’ll like to leave doubles or leave triples a little bit longer, just because that kind of reduces that initial growth that the fruit has. The Honeycrisp can get too large, and then storability is kind of bad at that point. | |
| And the storability is very important, of course. And how do you manage the crop load, because crop load has a very important role in the quality and especially in dry matter. So did you count the fruit over the tree? What is the strategy to target a number of fruit that doesn’t make your tree biennial. | |
| Right, so that’s something that is a continual learning process for us, especially with different varieties too. So generally speaking, we kind of have an overall arching goal for the block of how many bins per acre that we want. That generally comes from the history of the block, because we’ll have gone through biennial years in the past. We know this is too much and this is too little, things like that. Then we can break that down to trees per acre that we have, and then we can know how many fruit per tree we want. For a while we were targeting zones. So we want this much fruit in this zone, and then it would be even all the way up. Since then we’ve learned that you kind of have to know how much vigor is in what part of the tree. So you can’t over compensate for a lack of fruit in the bottom if you have weak limbs in the top. So we kind of have an idea per tree, and that’s kind of what we’re going with right now. One of the issues we’ve had with V-trellis is getting light down into the bottom of the canopy. So crop load in the bottom has been something that we have to really pay attention to and make sure that we can (indistinct). | The camera zooms in on Suzanne as she gestures to the different zones of the tree. |
| So this really is a good point, especially for the training system, because the angled canopy and the Y and the V are so popular in Washington, and this is probably because there is a higher level of light. Can you tell us, in the new orchard, what is the training system and rootstock combination that you are looking for? | The camera shot switches back to Suzanne and Stephano standing in the orchard row. |
| Yeah so the rootstock combination, it really depends on our site. So some of the new sites, it’s sandier soil. If we’re replanting, we’ll go with the Geneva series because of the idea of replant resistance, fire blight, you know, depending on what our surrounding orchards are. So that’s kind of the choice there, and then we’re still sticking with V-trellis mainly, but we’re trying to make our V angle a little bit narrower or our rows a little bit wider to make sure we can get light down, or we don’t go as tall. Sometimes we’ve had to take orchard heights down about a foot or two, about a meter or so, and then that has helped us a lot as well. | The camera zooms in on Suzanne as she speaks |
| This brings us to the next question. You have a net on top of this orchard. So what is the main goal of the net? I imagine sunburn. so how are you strategize to minimize the issue of sunburn at your company? | The camera zooms out to show the white netting which covers the orchard row. |
| Right, so sunburn is a big issue for Honeycrisp because it is sensitive to sunburn compared to some other varieties where we won’t use shade netting, we just have evaporative cooling for those really hot days. But we do want to apply the shade netting so we don’t have to rely on evaporative cooling for Honeycrisp. The trick with evaporative cooling is to use it, not like a hydro cooling system where you’re actually using the water itself to cool the fruit, but you’re letting the droplets stay small and then short cycles so the heat in the air is evaporated off. That’s really the point of cooling. So we’ve found in the past that we can over saturate our soils which increases Honeycrisp fruit size, it increases vigor, the roots can’t breathe as much because there’s too much moisture in the soil at that point. So if we have the shade net, it really just takes the mass of the heat away. Then we only use the EC on these really hot days like we’re going through this week. | The camera shot switches back to Suzanne and Stephano standing in the orchard row. |
| Yes, 47 yes Celsius, 117 Fahrenheit. So it’s something very unusual for June. | |
| Yeah, luckily Naches is a cooler climate, which is good for Honeycrisp, because it was developed in Minnesota. So this is a really good region for Honeycrisp. You’ll see a lot of different orchards up here with Honeycrisp. | |
| Thanks a lot, Suzanne, for addressing all those things for us. | |
| Absolutely! | |
| Good morning we are in the Naches valley with Dave Gleason, our horticulturist at Domex Superfresh Growers. | A panning aerial drone camera shot of an apple orchard with white shade netting over the trees is shown. |
| Domex Superfresh Growers works with eight different shippers in the state of Washington, and we’re one of the larger sales organizations and one of the largest growers of tree fruits in Washington State. | |
| Can you address a little bit, what is the main system that the company is using, the training system? And in rootstock, what are you looking for now? | Two people stand, facing each other, in the row of an apple orchard which has shade netting overhead. Text on screen shows their names: “Stephano Musacchi” and “Dave Gleason” as well as their current location: “Naches Valley, Washington”. |
| Well there’s so many options available these days. We are finding that, as we move ahead, we make changes based on what we’ve seen in the past. So one thing that everybody is trying to do is to make orchards that are ready for automation. So that as we get into the possibility of robot harvest, that we have systems that can be used for that very directly. Then we look at our environmental conditions in our site, what we deal with. Sometimes we have hail storms. Sometimes there are sun events that are very dramatic. So we look at what things come together to give us the highest percentage of quality fruit. | The camera pans backwards to show more of the orchard while still framing Stephano and Dave. |
| And this is a really good point. So how do you envision the design of the orchard for the automatization? So probably you want to go with the thin canopy or something like that? | |
| Yes, with the 2D system. Yeah, very two-dimensional, very narrow, so that everything can be accessed from one side easily without a lot of manipulation. | |
| So which are the training systems that you are targeting the most, and which are the rootstocks that you are using? | The camera zooms back in to focus on Stephano and Dave. |
| Right now we’re doing primarily a vertical system, and we’re exploring still several different kinds of rootstocks. The Geneva series seem to have some very good properties, and we are looking at four or five different Geneva possibilities. We’re in a block right now with 890, Geneva 890. We’ve been looking at 969 and 210, and also G11 and G41 are very common in the industry. We still have uh trees on NIC 29 and also M337 but, we’ve purposefully gone that direction. Bud9 and Bud10 are also rootstocks that have a lot of positives that we think have merit, but it depends so much on your location, your soil, the cultivar you’re trying to establish, and the history of the block. What’s the ground history, too, as you move into that. | |
| Now we are with Mike VanPelt, horticulturist at Domex Superfresh Growers, and we are in a nice block of WA 38, so the variety that is traded as Cosmic Crisp. So we heard about the soil and the combination of the variety, rootstocks, and soil. So what was the driver that brought you to this decision in this orchard? Which kind of rootstock are you’re using in the training system? So can you describe a little bit about the orchard? | Two people stand, facing each other, in the row of an apple orchard which has shade netting overhead. Text on screen shows their names: “Stephano Musacchi” and “Mike VanPelt” as well as their current location: “Naches Valley, Washington”. |
| Yes, so this is a Geneva 890. It’s fairly shallow in spots here. We’ve had a good response with the tree growth. As you can see, the training system is a two leader bi-ax system. The idea is to fill in our space, but still have windows of sunlight in here. We’re on… this is planted in 2018. | Mike walks towards the tree row, showing that the trees are still small and the space between them is not fully utilized yet. |
| So what is the planting distance? Do you remember? | |
| Four by eleven, I believe, in this part of the block. | |
| So it will be translated in meters, 1.2 meters by 3.3 meters, just for the audience that the probably is not familiar with the feet. I see that you have a very nice irrigation system, and especially you, on top of the orchard, you’ve got a fork system. So how did you end up with the fork system decision? Also, you have a net, so why you are combining both of them? | The camera shot switches back to Dave and Stephano standing in the orchard row. |
| So we have three systems, irrigation systems, in this block. One is for drip for the trees, we can also utilize fertigation out of it. We have rotator sprinklers, R-10s in here, which would be the second hose up, and then on the top, we’ve got a misting system. It is, our normal rotators in a block are roughly about 30 gallons per hour, this utilizes about 10. | The camera pans down to view the black tubing of the drip irrigation |
| You want to save water? | |
| Yes so we’re helping save water. A combination of that and the net, we have seen considerable difference. Just the other day, with our high temps, we actually saw a 50 degree difference. | The camera shot switches back to Dave and Stephano standing in the orchard row. |
| Oh wow, so it’s a lot. | |
| So quite a bit, and we’re saving some water at the same time. | |
| Yeah so, and I see that that sunburn is a very big issue in Washington, right? So I saw that you’re using the net, but you also spray a product over the fruit. So what are you spraying over the fruit? | |
| A calcium carbonate product in there. We normally probably wouldn’t do that, except for our borders around the orchard. But with this excessive heat of seven to ten days over 100 degrees, we just want to be on the safe side. | |
| So you do one application, or more repetition? | |
| We had more applications. So we started about a week and a half ago with it. | A camera shot moves slowly down a row in a vast apple orchard. White netting is seen above each row of trees. |
| Okay, and you are going along and coating everything with it? | |
| Correct. | |
| And with that, we thank you for hosting us in your orchard, and let’s go to the next place. | |
| Good morning everybody, today we are in the Columbia Basin visiting a very interesting orchard in a farm called the G2 orchard. With me today we got Dale Goldy the owner of the orchard that is going to introduce us to this new idea of high density planting. | A camera pans down a small flowering apple tree in an orchard, then out into the row. The trees are trellised and planted very close together. |
| It’s really a new concept of orchard because the rows are very narrow. So what are the variety and the rootstocks that you are using and what is the planting distance that you are adopting here? | Two people stand side by side in a flowering apple orchard row. Text on screen shows their names: “Stephano Musacchi” and “Dale Goldy” as well as their current location: “Columbia Basin, Washington”. |
| So this this was a Minneiska planting uh using G935 where we’re standing, and the spacing is three and a half by six. So six feet wide in the row, and three and a half down the row. Our concept here is to get away from the juvenility years where we’re dumping a lot of fertilizer and everything on the trees. And so Minneiska which is sold as Sweet Tango is very sensitive to nitrogen. So the idea here is to eliminate the need for applying a lot of nitrogen during to fill space. | The camera zooms in on Dale as he begins speaking. |
| And what are the strategies that you are using in the nursery to minimize the use of nitrogen in the field? | |
| So these trees here were bench grafted onto 935 in the first year in the nursery, and then planted out. | Dale kneels down to the ground and points at the base of one of the trees. |
| We grew the tree to somewhere in this area the first year, and then we left them in the nursery for a second year, and they reached basically the top wire. So when we planted, they were at least seven feet tall. | Dale stands and points to a spot on the tree around 5 feet up, and then to a point around 7 feet up. |
| After the first leaf in the nursery, we did some scoring and stuff that induced a lot of these branches that you see in here. So these little branches came with the tree from the nursery | Dale points to several small branches in the middle of the tree. |
| Okay, so how you are envisioning, because I saw that there is a lot of wire here. So are you going formal? Are you going to tie branches to the wire, or are you are envisioning just this at the beginning and then you transition to a more freestyle tree? | The camera pans over the wire trellis that the tree sits against. |
| So I would say it’s almost the opposite of that, because we’re going to use these branches here to increase our initial production while we develop this horizontal space on the wires. The idea is that we create some light windows in between this. So we’ll have fruit that hangs down underneath this, or a fruit that hangs down underneath that, but then eventually these branches here will get removed to allow the light in here. So, this is intended to be a very two-dimensional system. The tree canopy is only going to be, you know, maybe 10 to 12 inches, so that’s 30 centimeters? | Dale gestures to the branches that run perpendicular to the wire as being used for initial production, and the parallel branches as being the horizontal fruit hangs, between which, light will shine through. |
| Yeah. | |
| So we’re not going to have a thick canopy here. Sunlight is very important for fruit color development in this variety, so that’s another reason why we’re looking at having a thin canopy. | The camera focuses on Dale. |
| So you are also targeting an early crop. So last year, probably you already crop a consistent amount of fruit here. Can you discuss with us with the level? | The camera pans to Stephano. |
| Yeah, so the trees that you see here right now, I believe… So one thing we didn’t mention is that that the first planting was in 2019. These trees were planted in 2020, and so in the second leaf in 2021, we’re gonna have 45 bins an acre or so in here. | The camera pans to Dale. |
| We picked 42 bins an acre last year on the 2019 planting, and you know the birds like this variety, so we had a few that didn’t make it to the warehouse. | A camera pans down a small flowering apple tree in an orchard. The logo for the Orchard Systems 2021 conference appears on screen. |
Link to Youtube Video: Washington State Apple Production
