October 29,2018-
Global warming could affect the Valley’s sweet peach crop says a report on NPR this week related by Politico.
Despite Georgia’s claim to be the Peach State, California is the country’s biggest peach producer. Farmers there grow about half of the country’s fresh peaches, and almost all of the fruit that’s canned and processed in other ways.
Many fruit trees, including peaches, have a peculiar requirement. If they don’t experience enough chill during wintertime, they get confused and don’t bloom properly. No bloom, no harvest. The peach trees currently grown in California’s Central Valley require about 700 “chilling hours” during the winter. But scientists are predicting that by the end of the century, only 10 percent of the valley will reliably see that much chilling. And even if plant breeders create peach varieties that need less chilling, there’s another problem: Peach trees also yield less fruit when it gets too hot in summertime.