MADISON — Lorre Kolb: Taking a look at the 2017 Wisconsin Fruit Season. We’re visiting today with Amaya Atucha, Extension Fruit Crop Specialist, Department of Horticulture, University of Wisconsin-Madison/Extension, in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, and I’m Lorre Kolb. So, Amaya, we’re here today talking about fruits in Wisconsin. Can you talk about how the growing season impacted the harvest?
Amaya Atucha: Well, so this season it started in the spring. We had a very wet spring, and then the following half of the season and during the summer it was kind of like a more normal pattern that we usually have here in Wisconsin. So, that initial wet part of the season created a lot of disease incidents which impacted the very first part, but then by now, by the harvest time, we actually have seen that didn’t have much impact in terms of fruit quality or quantity of fruit that we’re harvesting.
Lorre Kolb: What fruits are being harvested at this time?
Amaya Atucha: So, at this time, we’re still harvesting grapes. We are harvesting maybe mid to late season apples. Most of the berries have been done already all of them has been already harvest. Maybe some late raspberries, but we don’t have a lot of that going on right now, and the cranberry harvest is happening right now. So, we are already started with the early varieties, and we’re moving on into the late varieties.
Lorre Kolb: So, are you seeing that the harvest are coming in at normal range?
Amaya Atucha: Everything looks normal. We have good fruit quality and we have, you know, a good harvest of all the crops.
Lorre Kolb: What are you doing as far as research with fruit crops this year?
Amaya Atucha: So, the research that I’m doing with grapes is mostly looking at how management that we can do in the vineyard may impact the fruit quality and obviously is going to impact the quality of the wines of the grapes grown here in Wisconsin. My lab also works on cold hardiness. So, the effect of cold and cold stresses on fruit crops in general. We work on cranberries is that area and we also work with grapes in that area.
Lorre Kolb: Where can people find out more information about fruit production in Wisconsin?
Amaya Atucha: So, we have a website where people can find information. It’s www.fruit.wisc.edu. In that website, we have a ton of information on growing berries, apple, other fruit trees, and cranberries that people can go there and we also have a link to our newsletter. We issue a newsletter every other week during the growing season with updates on management practices for fruit crops and then also some monitoring of pests and fruit quality that we do for all of the fruit crops.
Lorre Kolb: We’ve been visiting today with Amaya Atucha, Extension Fruit Crop Specialist, Department of Horticulture, University of Wisconsin-Madison/Extension, in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, and I’m Lorre Kolb.
— University of Wisconsin-Extension
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