Photo by Ronda Payne
Meeker Damage
Raspberry canes showing winter damage.
Abbotsford has been known as the raspberry capital of Canada since the early 1980s, but February’s late, harsh winter has left the title in question by damaging many canes and further dropping yield estimates for the 2019 season to 13.75 million pounds or less. Fraser Valley harvests in the heydays of the berry, in the late 80s and early 90s, were more than 40 million pounds.
Yields have been on the decline in recent years, but this latest blow may be the proverbial nail in the coffin for the struggling fruit. Cheap imports, poor fruit pricing, growers converting to other crops and other issues have all contributed to the declining yields.
Raspberry Industry Development Council chair James Bergen notes the winter damage has added insult to injury.
“There is some concern right now,” he says. “There’s certain fields where people saw the damage and they haven’t tied [the canes] yet. They’re not going to tie. They aren’t going to harvest at all, or they are waiting a ridiculously long time to do it. I don’t know how many acres there are like that. I know of at least two fields.”
Acreage of raspberries is down to about 2,200 acres or less based on Statistics Canada’s estimate of 2,900 acres in 2018, 3,185 in 2016 and 3,637 in 2014.
The greatest cane damage seems to be in Meeker and Wakefield varieties, but brand new or significantly older fields of other varieties are also seeing canes unlikely to produce. In some fields, damage that was seen as significant in early to mid-April wasn’t as bad by early May, but many growers may see it as reason enough to give up on the crop.
A few growers, like Jack Braich of JK Agro Industries, are continuing with their raspberries and believe the industry could recover.
“What we need is a new variety,” says Bergen. “I don’t know if the climate has changed so that [Meeker] isn’t able to handle the climate or if this is an anomaly. We will continue working with our breeding program to find a new variety that is specifically suited to the climate for the Fraser Valley and that is high yielding, disease resistant, has good or exceptional fruit quality, taste, and is machine harvestable.”
Braich believes the climate has changed to the point where Meeker is no longer viable. Unfortunately, the raspberry breeding program that would bring new varieties wasn’t without challenges last year.
At the RIDC AGM in March, BC Berry Cultivar Development Inc. research scientist Michael Dossett noted the cooler where plants were stored experienced an undetected temperature rise leading to the plants breaking from dormancy. They were moved to the greenhouse before being planted in the field. This blip in maturity caused lower growth than expected.
Dossett said new selections from 2015 and 2016 crosses are looking good. He considers BC 1653.7 the most promising.
“It’s about a Chemainus-sized berry, very firm,” Dossett said. “It looks like it’s going to machine harvest really well, but the more exciting thing is it has up to 30 berries per lateral. It just looks so promising that we’re bulking it up for trials.”
The hope is to have the variety planted in grower fields this year for trial with a large number available for production in 2020.
It’s too early to speculate on whether these new varieties can help save the raspberry industry, and it is unknown at this time what kind of pricing the growers who are hanging on to the fruit can expect.
“There’s the lower prices the growers are expecting as well as the yields are going to be down,” says Bergen. “I am sure that growers are going to be seeking insurance, (but) if we get something that produces 10,000 pounds per acre, you can do the math to see how quickly we can get to 17 million pounds.”
The future of the raspberry industry in BC is uncertain, but hopefully, with new varieties and growers who want to keep the fruit productive, the Fraser Valley might be able to hang on to its capital status.