There will be no shortage of California Navel oranges during the early part of the 2014-15 season, although fruit size may be smaller than normal, according to Joel Nelsen, president of California Citrus Mutual in Porterville, CA, a trade industry group representing the interests of citrus growers primarily in the Central Valley. But he expects total citrus volume for the season to be down from last year even though last year’s crop was reduced by about 20 to 25 percent due to a severe and prolonged early freeze.California Navels on a packingline. Due to water shortages the Navel crop size will be down this year and sizes will be smaller, but quality is excellent and ample fruit should be available at least for the first few months of the season. (Photo by Rand Green)

The principal cause of both the smaller fruit size and the reduced overall volume is lack of water, he said, but the full effects will not be felt until late season.

The California Navel Orange Objective Measurement Report, issued by the California Department of Agriculture in cooperation with the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service, is usually a reliable estimate of California’s Navel crop. The newest report, released Sept. 11, estimates the 2014-15 crop at 78 million 40-pound cartons, which would make it the smallest crop since the freeze year of 2008-09, but California Citrus Mutual thinks the crop is even smaller than the USDA’s NASS estimate because it does not take into account losses due to the current drought conditions.

However, CCM anticipates normal production and excellent quality and flavor during the first four months of the harvest season, according to Nelsen.

Unlike Navels, Mandarins should be up in volume this year because of more acreage in production.

The Navel harvest “is going to get off to a normal start,” Nelsen told The Produce News Oct. 10. “I think we’ve got some early picking going on as we speak, but  most of the industry will get going next week. The fruit is going to be a little smaller than normal, mainly because of water issues,” and total volume for the year “is going to be less than last year.”

Last year’s freeze, which began Dec. 5, was supposed to have been a one-day freeze, but it lasted nine, Nelsen said.

Although losses were significant, “what was remarkable for the industry this past season is that we were able to salvage a lot more good fruit than we anticipated because we have better technology at the packinghouses. That was a remarkable story,” he said. A decade earlier, following the freeze growers would have cut fruit in their coldest blocks and, if there was freeze damage, would have abandoned the orchard. Now, they are able to harvest the fruit and run it through scanners that separate the bad from the good, improving utilization. “We hardly got any negative comments from consumers about bad fruit,” he said.

Because of the timing of the December 2013 freeze, it most severely affected growers in Kern County, who — because of their earliness — are usually less affected by cold and who generally don’t have the same investment in frost protection equipment as growers farther north.

But this year, the shortage of water will cut into the crop even more than last year’s frost. In addition to smaller fruit size, thousands of acres of citrus, mainly Navels, have been taken out of production for lack of water, Nelsen said. CCM has been unable to pin down a number on the exact amount of acres taken out of production. “We tried. Man, we tried,” he said. His best guess is that it is something in the range of 6,000 to 10,000 acres that are now “gone,” out of a total of about 200,000 acres in the Central Valley, which is the heart of the state’s Navel and Mandarin production.

Unlike Navels, Mandarins will be up in volume this year,  mainly because of young orchards coming into fuller production. “We said a year or two ago that the Mandarin crop was going to double each year for the next three or four years” because of significant new plantings, Nelsen said. This year, the drought notwithstanding, “you are going to see a significant Mandarin crop,” with the harvest having started  mid-October and availability continuing all the way into  April.