By Clint Thompson
Two of Florida’s top tropical fruits were highlighted by an industry expert during an interview with AgNet Media.
Jonathan Crane, University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) professor and tropical fruit crop specialist, discussed the state of this year’s avocado and mango crops, heading into the summer.
“The avocado crop has been down because of laurel wilt. We were down about 60% last year. Hopefully it’s going to start to improve as the newly planted trees start to come online. It’s looking okay so far this year,” Crane said. “Some of the crop seems light, but others seem to be okay. It’ll be hard to tell until early next year how well we did. People are estimating it should be about the same or a little better than last year. That’s a good thing.
“Mangoes, it’s sort of mixed. We have some growers that have a normal crop, a good crop; others not so good. That depends quite a bit on disease control. If they had missed some of the disease prevention, then they have much less fruit. But others seem to be okay.”