By Clint Thompson
The weather’s transition from prolonged drought to occasional rains has negatively impacted Georgia’s blueberry crop.
Blueberry producer Johnny Allen, located in Alma, Georgia, said his crop encountered fruit splits with this year’s crop.
“We went from dry to rains there a little bit, so that hurt us,” Allen said. “When you get in drought and then you get rains, then you get rain split and you have to clean that up.”
According to the UGA Weather Network, Alma, Georgia, received 4.45 inches of rainfall from May 1 to May 20, which followed just 2.98 inches in March and April combined.
Crop Impact
“You know nothing replaces a little bit of rainwater. What I would have preferred is if you got about a half inch of good rainwater, but rain is all about how it comes,” Allen said. “When it did come, it stayed for like a day and a half. It didn’t rain but maybe about an inch or so, but it rained all day. The berries soak it up as well. So that the ones that’s totally advanced, it just splits them and busted them and stuff like that. It turns your quality bad.
“There’s nothing you can do about it but wait on it until it dries up and hope it doesn’t rain again before it dries up. Some of them will bust; like you stick a firecracker in it and then some of them will just have hairline cracks in them. The ones that shot hairline cracks, you give it a few days and they’ll seal themselves, you know; so they don’t leak.
“What happens is if they are wet and you go to the packing shed and you put them on a line and have just a few of them busted ones, they wet the line. Then all the other berries are rolling through the wet. So it sort of messes up your good ones as well.”
According to the University of Georgia, split fruit is unmarketable, and if a large amount of the fruit becomes split, it can impact harvest quality. It is important to harvest ripe fruit in a timely fashion prior to forecasted rain events.