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Just before harvest is a good time to appraise the crop as it sits on the tree ready for harvest.
At this time, any opportunity for improving performance next year is readily visible by careful observation of this year's crop in regard to volume, fruit size, fruit quality and trueness to type.
Harvest strategies for this season can also be developed in order to maximize this year's potential returns.
After harvest, observations noted in the harvest appraisal can be verified against packout volume and reject analysis of defects.
With unstable varieties, particularly striped red colour sports of the Gala varieties (eg Royal Gala, Galaxy, Brookfield), trees can be checked for trueness to type and those showing colour reversion problems marked for later re-working with true-to-type grafting wood.
Where consideration is being given to changing or upgrading the variety by grafting, this is also a good time to check for virus-like symptoms such as apple mosaic and apple ring russet. Presence of these virus symptoms would indicate that the trees are probably unsuitable for grafting because many of the newer varieties are virus sensitive.
Where a grafting programme is likely to be undertaken, the trees from which graft wood is to be collected should be carefully checked for trueness-to-type, and freedom from virus disease. Graftwood should not be gathered from trees showing colour instability, and once the fruit is harvested there is no way of identifying these weak trees.
With unstable varieties, it is normal to find a small percentage of reverted trees even though the people responsible for their propagation have taken every precaution to avoid this problem.
Checking new blocks in their 3rd or 4th leaf and reworking any reverted trees as soon as their poor colour becomes apparent minimizes the problem.
Sometimes, parts of trees will revert to an "off-type" strain. Marking such branches before harvest for later removal enables a good colour line of fruit to be maintained as the block ages.
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