AUGUST 2014
CELEBRATING 135 YEARS AS CANADA’S PREMIER HORTICULTURAL PUBLICATION
VOLUME 64 NUMBER 08
VALUE CHAIN IMPROVEMENTS
48 hours from the tree means juicy-in-time, tender fruit
On July 15, Loblaw’s Patrick Gilbert, one of three vendor development managers in Canada, monitored the start of the yellow plum harvest, sending field reports on size and sweetness to produce category managers. “The variety of Early Golden plums is unique,” he says. “They are a sweet piece of nature’s candy.” He’s pictured here with fifth-generation grower Jourdan Tregunno in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. Photos by Denis Cahill.
INSIDE A profile of BC’s fresh cut apple slicer Page 6 FOCUS: Storage and containers Page 14
Quebec grower salutes the shallot Page 16
www.thegrower.org P.M. 40012319 $3.00 CDN
KAREN DAVIDSON There’s a harder edge to marketing Ontario’s tender fruit this summer. Out front early with buyers and proactive with incentive programs, the Ontario Tender Fruit Producers’ Marketing Board (OTFPMB) isn’t taking retail buyers for granted. “We want buyers to forget about last year’s harsh winter,” says Phil Tregunno, OTFPMB chair. “That’s why we held a ‘Celebrate the Bloom’ event in May to reassure buyers that the industry is progressing on reasonable timelines for a full crop of peaches, plums, nectarines and apricots.” The buzz on May 8 was about more than bees pollinating the plum orchard on Tregunno’s farm. It was a new incentive plan for retail buyers. In the past, the board has offered price rebates at the end of the season based on
volumes purchased. This year, the price incentive is upfront to pay retailers to advertise in their flyers and social media platforms. In addition, there are transportation subsidies to farflung markets on the prairies and the Maritimes. “Our emphasis is on quality, which means the entire consumer eating experience,” says Tregunno. “That’s flavour, appearance, shelf life, packaging.” As the largest grower in the Niagara peninsula, Tregunno is reorienting the production system of his 700 acres to deliver a more mature piece of fruit. The retailers are eager to buy local but insist on a memorable taste experience. Think of it as juicy-in-time fruit, a much more complex task than just-in-time car parts. That’s an order as tall as Tregunno himself. This means tree-ripening with absolutely no conditioning rooms as is the common practice in California.
Harvesting and packing systems must be finetuned to deliver hand-picked fruit within 48 hours to distribution centres. This is why Tregunno and his sons Ryan and Jourdan have revamped both their container and packing systems in the last year. They sourced a Californiadesigned box container that can be palletized and moved from the orchard straight to the packing line and coolers. With a radio-frequency
identification (RFID) tag system in each orchard block, they can now easily enter production and harvesting data into their Fruit Tracker software system. Specific to the tender fruit industry, this is a computer program that tracks all the inputs: fertilizer, crop protection, pruning dates and so on. Ryan Tregunno is impressed with the time saved by inputting the data just once for the CanadaGAP food safety program. CONTINUED ON PAGE 3