Bari Produce LLC in Madera, CA, expects to harvest and pack around 1.25 million boxes of fresh grapes this year, according to Justin Bedwell. Most of those will come during the fall season.

The company also grows and packs stone fruit during the summer months and pomegranates for the fall season.

“Our stone fruit will finish up here in the next seven days,” Bedwell told The Produce News Aug. 4. In the past, the company had stone fruit varieties that went later. But “a lot of the late season stuff has been pulled out. Nuts are taking the place of some of the [late season] stone fruit we had,” so now, with respect to fall fruit, it is “just grapes and pomegranates for us.”

In grapes, “we are just finishing our early season varieties and moving more into our midseason varieties.” Among those are Scarlet Royal red seedless grapes and Red Globe seeded grapes. Soon after, “Autumn Royal and Autumn Kings should start as well,” he said. Those, “like everything else,” seem to be early this year.

By Labor Day, “I would expect the Autumn King market to be pumping pretty heavily,” he said. “It is extremely early.”

Four years ago, growers were “getting really high money” for Autumn Kings “because it was a newer variety” and was supposed to be a great green seedless grape for the late deal, he said. Although it does hold well and “people still want to hold it,” for Bari at least it starts coming off during summertime “and fits a nice hole for us as soon as the Thompsons and Princess finish up.”

Bari also has Crimson seedless grapes for the late season.

Bari is also growing some new late season varieties that are not yet named. They are numbered varieties, some from USDA breeding programs and some from private breeding programs. “Because we like to pick, pack and ship, we don’t like to store grapes for the long term,” Bedwell said. “So if our Autumn Kings start this year August 15 and they run through the end of September, the idea is it would be nice to have another green variety that comes off the middle of September to carry us through a little bit longer.

“There is obviously demand for California grapes through the first of the year, so if we could have something fresh and coming off then, those are new varieties that we will be looking at.”

Bari is looking at a black seedless variety and a green seedless variety that will harvest “post-September 1 for our ground, which is early,” he said. “But they are just experimental varieties now.” It remains to be seen whether they will prove acceptable and go on to the production stage.

In the company’s pomegranate program, Bari expects to have “a slight reduction in production this year just due to water issues, because a lot of our pomegranates are on the West Side [of the San Joaquin Valley]“ which has been severely affected by drought and reduced agricultural water allocations.

What water is available “is expensive,” so growers must “pick and choose” their crops. Pomegranates “have not been a real bell ringer the last couple of years.” The markets have been “all right,” he said, “but they have not been what they were five years ago, so our choice was just not to irrigate” a portion of the pomegranate acreage and use the available water on crops that have performed better.

The varieties of pomegranates Bari handles are Early Wonderfuls and Wonderfuls. Both seem to be about 10 days early this year, “and quality looks good,” Bedwell said. “We are looking forward to a nice pomegranate deal. We export a lot of them,” mostly to the Asian marketplace, particularly Taiwan, China and Korea. “Domestically, we have had a nice little niche in the past couple of years.”

At Bari, “we never hold pomegranates long,” he said. “Pick, pack and ship is our mentality on everything. Last year, we shipped the last of our boxes right around the 10th of December. We probably should be done right around Thanksgiving this year.”

For tree fruit, it has been “a very good year,” Bedwell said. “Grapes started off fairly well. We’ll see if we continue that in the fall. I’m fairly optimistic on the pomegranates.” Due to the water issue, “I think a lot of people are going to have production be down a little bit.”

Although pomegranates have struggled in the marketplace a bit in recent years, the reduced acreage industry-wide seems to be helping. “Last year we got a hit of a better market,” he said. “I am hopeful that this year will continue the trend.”