Getting The Best Out Of Royal Gala

Careful harvest management is the final step in maximizing orchard returns from this variety. The value of the fruit depends on its fruit size and colour. Generally, large fruit is worth much more than smaller fruit and colour needs to be at least 66 % of the skin surface area. It is a variety where fruit size and colour are very much maturity dependent.

Being an early variety, individual fruit maturity passes quickly through the optimum maturity stage, so to keep the harvested fruit within export specification, it has to be harvested skillfully with frequent multiple picks.

Experience with early harvest blocks this season has been that maturity has moved fast, and because of the cool season there is a tendency towards greasy skin, a condition not wanted in the market. These earlier blocks are usually on dwarf rootstocks, or have been girdled and often also treated with dormancy breaking products. These treatments tend to compress harvest.

Blocks on standard rootstocks without these treatments are showing large variations in fruit maturity within and between trees. Careful selective picking is critical in such trees.

The best picking strategy is:

1. Graze the block with 4 - 7 day turnaround.
2. The first pick, and possibly the second pick, should focus only on large, higher colour fruit in the lower half of the tree. If fruit size is good, set a minimum size of 75 or 73 mm for these picks.
3. Upper tree fruit, particularly in younger trees, or older trees with substantial amounts of lateral bud on 1 year wood fruit may look highly coloured and ready to pick, but usually the fruit is still immature at the time of the first and even second pick. Be guided on this fruit by its background colour, rather than its red surface colour. If in doubt use the starch iodine test to confirm.
4. Background colour movement tends to be towards the stem end and progresses towards the calyx end. In the early part of the harvest, fruit still showing a green tinge in the calyx may be ok until the next pick.
5. Once ESP status begins to advance into B category, drop the minimum size restriction and pick by maturity status.
6. Smaller sized fruit may barely cover the cost of harvest, packing and FAS, and if prices are much below forecast could result in a bill rather than a payment cheque. Leaving smaller fruit in the orchard for a later process pick may give the best economic result.