Second largest crop for Washington Apples

According to Todd Fryhover, president of Washington Apple Commission, this year Washington growers harvested just under 136 million boxes of apples (135,949,000), which is second largest crop in history. Biggest crop was in 2014 with 142 million boxes. “Every year is difficult when the volume go up,” – he comments. “But compared to 2014, now we have several different varieties. The diversity helps. I wouldn’t say we oversupplied.”

“Export markets have been challenging because of tariffs in China and India”. 70% of the crop is usually sold inside US, while around 30% of Washington apples are exported. “Biggest exports markets this season are: Mexico, Canada, then probably Taiwan, Vietnam, India”.

“We should run full season with all varieties without any difficulties,” - Todd Fryhover says. “Organic category is different, organic apples are not available whole year round, but conventional varieties will be available till new season”.

As for prices Todd mentions that prices on apples are very aggressive this season. “If we look on entire apple category, apples growers from EU, Eastern Europe, they feel the same way. A lot of pressure on apples this year.”

At Fruit Logistica in Berlin visitors had an opportunity to try new apple variety, cross between the Honeycrisp and Enterprise, called Cosmic Crisp®. New apple has perfect flavor and texture balance, longest storage with natural resistance to browning. “This was 1^st year to harvest Cosmic Crisp® and crop was somewhere around 346,000 boxes. Harvest is limited and is sold out very quickly. Next year we expect the number to be closer to 2 - 2.2 million boxes, and the year after 6-7 millions. We call the Cosmic Crisp - Tsunami. It is coming very quickly.” 

For more information check https://bestapples.com/