California Pomegranate Season Starting Strong
SONOMA, CA – California Central Valley Growers are currently reporting strong growing conditions for pomegranates.
“A consistently warm summer has moved our traditional start date forward by about a week. We are seeing high color in the Granada’s, with a normal range of sizes. Our Foothills will follow by about a week,” said Ralph Melendez, Field Operations Manager for Slaydeco, Inc. Ralph predicts Slaydeco’s Granada’s to start shipping by the end of the last week of July, according to a press release.
Jeff Simonian of Simonian Fruit Company also sees that early season varieties are running a week early. In terms of how the drought might impact overall size and quality of the crop, he says, “It appears that sufficient water is being diverted from annual crops to ensure a normal pomegranate harvest in terms of total volume, range of fruit sizes, sugar and color.”
PomWonderful’s Tom Rouse says that the company’s Field Managers are also projecting an early start date. “If Mother Nature continues to cooperate, we’ll start shipping a full-range of Wonderful sizes starting in the last week of September or early in the first week of October. At that point we’ll also be refilling the pipeline with fresh-pack arils. We encourage retailers to contact us to find out more about our full-line of market-proven sales aids. Pomegranates are a high impulse purchase item and they sell best when merchandised in a high-traffic location in the store,” he added.
Tom Tjerandsen, the Manager of the Sonoma based Pomegranate Council, says that pomegranates continue to increase at an average of 20% per year, with total shipments expected to exceed six million 25 pound equivalent boxes, according to a press release.
Stay tuned to AndNowUKnow for more updates as this season progresses.
