Fruit quality and grower costs

November 2011 | Presented by Paul James | Future Orchards® Orchard Walk presentation

Fruit quality has a direct effect on the economics of apple and pear production because the value of a crop depends not only on tonnes harvested, but on how much fruit meets market specifications. In this Future Orchards® presentation, Paul James considers the relationship between quality outcomes and the costs growers carry through the season.

The resource sits within the November 2011 Future Orchards® program and complements other material from the same Orchard Walk on producing high-quality fruit. It encourages growers to assess quality as a business issue: management decisions made in nutrition, irrigation, crop load, pest and disease control, harvest timing and handling all influence the proportion of fruit that can be sold into higher-value grades.

For orchard businesses, the useful message is to look beyond headline yield. Poor colour, undersized fruit, maturity problems, cosmetic damage and handling defects can reduce packout and increase the effective cost of every marketable kilogram. Quality management therefore needs to be planned alongside productivity and cost control rather than treated as a separate issue.

This presentation is most useful when read with the associated November 2011 Future Orchards® notes on producing high-quality fruit, because together they frame quality as a combination of orchard performance, market requirements and financial return.