By Clint Thompson
Alabama’s peach crop this year was on par with the 2024 crop up until harvest season. Harvests did not finish that way, however, according to Edgar Vinson, assistant research professor and Extension specialist in the Department of Horticulture at Auburn University.
He discussed this year’s yields as harvest season continues for producers.
“It was kind of a mixed year. It was not necessarily a bad year; we just did not have the yields that we had last year. Weather events, chilling and all of that was similar to last year, so we kind of expected the yields to be the same, but the yield was off,” Vinson said.
“We had issues with disease, in particular with bacterial spot. That caused some problems, and there was some developing fruit on the tree that looked like it may size, but at some point, during development the growth stopped. Turns out it was not harvestable fruit.”
Vinson expects harvests to continue through the middle of August.
The rainy, wet conditions that Alabama farmers experienced throughout most of the summer led to increased instances of bacterial spot. But that wasn’t the main contributing factor in yield suppression, believes Vinson.
“It did provide a wet, moist environment for the bacteria. It did limit the yield somewhat,” Vinson said. “But it may have been more of just not having the fruit on the tree the growers thought they had.
“I think it had a lot to do with cold damage that was not evident at the time. It may not have been severe enough to cause bloom damage or death of the fruit right away, but it caused enough damage that at some point down the line of development, it caused the fruit to stop developing.”