Last year’s apple harvest was a record breaker in the state.

This year apple growers in the Yakima Valley are hoping for another good harvest.

“We will hopefully be able to harvest high quality fruit,” said apple grower Charlie de La Chapelle.

Washington state is by far the largest producer of apples in the nation, with a vast majority of apples produced in the Yakima Valley.

Last year’s crop totalled a record of 150 million boxes. This year, industry experts are expecting a smaller crop, but nonetheless a good year.

“We’re expecting a harvest that will be shorter, we won’t have as many apples as we did last year, but we should still have somewhere between 125-135 million cartons - which is  still a lot of apples,” said Export Marketing Director for the Washington Apple Commission, Rebecca Lyons.

However, the record warm temperatures and water shortage in Yakima could be tremendous factors in the quality of this year’s crops.

“The challenge is with these temperatures and less water you could expect smaller fruit,” said de La Chapelle.

He says his crops have already been affected by the heat, causing sunburn and other damages that have caused a lot of his apples to go bad.

“We’re working as best as we can and we are hoping Mother Nature cooperates and provides us with more congenial temperatures for us to mature our crops and pick them," he said.

This year, growers will also begin to pick apples earlier than previous years.  ‘Early Golden’ apples are currently being harvested by some growers and Galas are a few weeks ahead of schedule.

“Well we anticipate starting harvest very soon, which would be about 10 days ahead of normal,” said de La Chapelle.

Yet the kick off to an early harvest season isn’t the most concerning part for growers. Most are worried about the drought conditions causing pain to the region.

“We have another bad year like this next year there will a lot of people like me that won’t be in business,” added de La Chapelle.

A typical apple harvest season starts in mid-August and ends early November.

Yakima Valley is the largest apple producing region in Washington.

Source - http://www.freshplaza.com/