Of the “serious” pome fruit producers, South Africa, together with Brazil, has the production areas closest to the equator. This means higher summer temperatures and generally, altogether more plant stress and more fruit downgraded for processing compared to our major competitors.

The great inefficiency of caring for fruit that ultimately ends up in a juice bin significantly impacts the profitability of the South African industry, especially under the serious cost squeeze conditions that the industry is experiencing. It should not be surprising that research under this theme is predominantly aimed at decreasing sunburn and internal fruit quality defects brought about by climatic stress.

Building on a project that modeled climate change into the future at a regional level, Prof Stephanie Midgley developed a climate change strategy for the deciduous fruit industry. The output of the aforementioned project is currently being incorporated into an App that will assist growers and technical advisors in long-term planning and site selection for new orchards. The implementation of the climate change strategy will be the responsibility of a sustainability manager who will join Hortgro in January 2024 to oversee the newly established sustainability and resource management programme.

New projects were initiated to evaluate the effect of drape nets on the overall fruit quality of plums. It follows a similar project initiated in 2022 to evaluate drape nets on pears.

EXPERTISE: GROWING SEASON CLIMATE WORKGROUP

Research Team

Projects list