Florida grapefruit production is forecast to rise by 35 per cent this season on last as the sector begins its recovery from two hurricane-struck years, and welcomes the return of high-quality fruit.
Official figures announced by the US department of agriculture forecast a total Florida grapefruit crop of 26 million boxes, up from 19.3m boxes last season. Of that, 9m will be boxes of white fruit and 17m of pigmented grapefruit.
There is still a way to go before the state’s grapefruit growing areas can be deemed to have recovered from the hurricanes - the forecast is the lowest since the 1949-50 crop of 24.2m boxes other than the last two seasons. The white category projection is the lowest in more than 75 years and the pigmented forecast is the lowest since 1989-90, again discounting 2004-05 and 2005-06.
“This is a rebound crop for grapefruit,” said Doug Bournique, executive vice president of the Indian River Citrus League, which represents 1,000 growers in the state’s main production area. “We are not all the way back up yet as the trees are so stressed, but it shows that the trees with good nutrition are coming back which is good news for our industry and our economy.
“We are really excited about quality - we have the best fruit quality in a decade and will have a vintage Indian River crop this year which will help sell itself. Brix levels are really high and we have had great growing conditions.”
The season is running a couple of weeks behind because of the weather, but Bourniqe said that this is no bad thing. “We actually had a perfect winter with a good cold snap in January-February when it was just cold enough and set all the trees off in unison. We got good bloom and very timely rainfall, with no big storms.”
Fruit will start loading to the UK over the next few weeks and should be in the market by the end of November.
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