- Author: Ben Faber
That's a good question. Some question whether they flourish now. Southern California does not have the landscapes of apples, pears and peaches of Oregon, Michigan, Pennsylvania or even Fresno, but there are nice little niches of persimmon, low chill apple, and even blueberries that thrive in the lower winter chilling environments along the coast and in the south of California.
Here is an example of what might happen to this fruit industry here. A recent, detailed study extrapolate the accumulation of cold periods in Spain over the next 30 years and to the end of the century. This provides growers with important information on the viability of future fruit cultivation in the various Spanish regions, as it allows them to know if there will be the necessary accumulated cold for the fruits to grow correctly or if they should relocate their crops to other areas.
The results obtained show a general reduction in the accumulation of cold in any future period for all the chilling models and scenarios considered. The reduction is especially significant at the end of the century, under the most pessimistic scenario. These results invite us to strongly commit, not only to adapt but also to mitigate climate change, something that would make an important difference. The probable reduction of cold would threaten the viability of some varieties of fruit trees in the near future, especially in regions where there is currently a low accumulation of cold and there are varieties that require a lot of it.
The study can be viewed at:
https://www.nat-hazards-earth-syst-sci.net/19/1087/2019/
Climate change discussions for California can be found at these websites:
https://ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=30513
https://ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=28175
An intriguing Santa Barbara apple study grower's observations are worth noting: https://ucanr.edu/blogs/Topics/index.cfm?start=1&tagname=apples
By the way the 'Moor Park' apricot is not from Moorpark, CA, but from England and the variety has never done very well in Moorpark (http://www.ngr.ucdavis.edu/treedetails.cfm?v=997).
- Author: Ben Faber
A fig. A yellow fig. A most delicious 'Kadota' fig. A piece of fruit that falls apart easily and shows every nick, scrape and bump.
And it doesn't take much to reduce a fig to something that is not very attractive to a consumer.
There have been all manner of packing materials that have been devised for shipping fresh figs. Nestled in individual packing hollows they can be shipped to arrive in pretty good condition.
'Bursa Black" which is a 1/4 pound fig grown in the Bursa region of Turkey is shipped to large cities in Europe and because of careful fruit selection and packaging, arrives in excellent shape at the delivery point
Some of these shipping containers pack for individual display, making it easy for the seller to keep from damaging the fruit when removed from the container.
The ultimate shipping container that has been developed for delicate fruit is a "suspended tray" container which floats the fruit to its destination. It's somewhat pricey, so the value of the fruit will determine its value to the shipper. A description of the tray using pears and avocados follows:
SUSPENDED TRAY PACKAGE FOR PROTECTING
SOFT FRUIT FROM MECHANICAL DAMAGE
J. F. Thompson, D. C. Slaughter, M. L. Arpaia
Bartlett pears and Hass avocados are subject to transport vibration damage and their susceptibility to damage
increases as the fruit soften during ripening. Firm fruit,greater than 50 SIQ units (13‐lb penetrometer firmness) for
pears and greater than 65 SIQ units (3.0‐lb penetrometer firmness) for avocados, could be shipped in a wide variety of
conventional packages with little transit vibration damage.However softer fruit sustains significant transit vibration
damage when packed in conventional packaging systems and subjected to severe in‐transit vibration conditions common to cross‐country transit in the United States. This study demonstrated that softer fruit was protected from transit vibration damage when packed in a suspended tray packaging system. The study showed that even eating‐ripefruit could be shipped in the suspended tray system with transit vibration damage not significantly greater than nonvibrated control fruit.
http://ucce.ucdavis.edu/files/datastore/234-908.pdf
But hey, an egg carton may work just about as well.