Following Small Fruit Last Year, Navel Crop is Back to Good Size

The California navel orange crop looks better this year than it did in 2018 when so much of the crop was never harvested due to poor sizing.

Craig Kallsen is a UCANR Kern County Cooperative Extension Farm Advisor focused on citrus and tropical fruits. “Last year the navel orange industry was plagued with very small fruit sizes and a lot of people didn’t even harvest it,” said Kallsen. “It looks much better this year, so growers are happier. And while the fruit size is up, it can also mean that the number of fruit per tree is down.”

The small fruit in 2018 may have been due to a big crop in 2017. Last year, the trees only had enough stored energy to devote to smaller fruit. But this year, the industry is back to bigger fruit, and probably less crop.

“We also had a lot of hot dry winds in the 2018 summer which caused a lot of fruit to drop,” noted Kallsen