Hawke’s Bay growers were invited to view the trees and taste the fruit from Roger Brownlie’s trial plantings in Bay View on 28 January 2020.
Summerfruit NZ’s new interim chief executive, Richard Palmer, introduced himself, spoke about his experience in horticulture and fielded a few questions from the growers gathered.
Brief presentations were made by Roger on the tree phenology and a little on Apricot Co. Vincent Bus, from Plant & Food Research, talked us through the information that has been gathered by the team from Clyde on the varieties as grown in Central Otago.
These trial trees are now mature, grown on the FOPS style and following a ‘normal’ winter chill season, were again carrying a big crop load. There had been a little thinning done but now we can see that it was insufficient and as a consequence fruit size was smaller than possible, harvest could have been slightly delayed and sugar levels negatively impacted.
Flowering occurred later than all other apricot varieties on the orchard, more akin to cherry timing, which opened the question of whether or not they are self-fertile or to what degree they might be.
The trees at this point appear to unaffected by bacterial issues as does the fruit.
As can be seen in the photographs, the fruit has a high background colour and, especially Nzsummer3, has a high level of red blush. The easy to make mistake is picking too early; at this stage it seems as though harvest for Nzsummer2 is mid-January in Bay View and late January for Nzsummer3. Other parts of Hawke’s Bay could be later again, but that theory has yet to be tested.
Fruit from both selections, over three harvest timings were shown and all present asked to fill out a questionnaire after tasting the samples. A hand poll suggested that about half those present preferred Nzsummer2 and the half preferred Nzsummer3. In a similar manner, about a third preferred each harvest over the other two samples across each of the two selections.
If you are interested in ordering Nzsummer budwood (15 February deadline) or learning more about the series, contact Andrea Crawford by emailing her at andrea.crawford@summerfruitnz.co.nz
As will now be the norm at Summerfruit NZ field days, visitors were asked to park in the designated area, clean their footwear and walk through a disinfection bath.
