Forrence spreads wings to new varieties, but loyal to McIntosh
Forrence spreads wings to new varieties, but loyal to McIntosh
“The main focus of our business continues to be bringing in a great crop and satisfying our customers,” Peter Forrence, vice president of Forrence Orchards in Peru, NY, told The Produce News. “In a generational business like ours we just hope that the next generations will want to continue the traditions that we have developed during our history, which dates back to 1833.”
The company produces a wide range of apple varieties, with the McIntosh and Honeycrisp being among the top. In fact, the company has been producing the McIntosh since it became commercially available.
“It continues to be sought after even though it’s an old standard variety,” said Forrence. “Any distributor on the East Coast that does not have the McIntosh is in trouble.”
The storage concept, he explained, didn’t get its start until the mid-1950s, although the McIntosh was stored earlier in the Hudson Valley and elsewhere where the cool weather helped to maintain the apple.
Robert Smock was a major promoter of controlled atmosphere apple storage back in the middle of the last century, and Cornell University has a paper that he authored on the subject in 1988 in which he addresses the evolvement of the technology from the 1940s to 1960s. The paper claims that CA storage had been disputed in some areas of the country, but that Smock and his students at Cornell pioneered research, development and adoption of CA technology. That certainly had a strong bearing on the adoption of CA storage and how it has benefited the produce industry throughout the decades since that time.
Forrence acknowledged that there are many new apple varieties out there — some managed and some not — that all vie for the success that the McIntosh has enjoyed for over 100 years.
“We are also a strong promoter of the Honeycrisp,” Forrence noted. “And we are growing the two new New York varieties, the SnapDragon and RubyFrost, which were commercially tested for a year under the names NY1 and NY2 before being launched under their new names. We hope that these will be as successful as the Honeycrisp.”
He added that people are always interested in new varieties and that Forrence Orchards needs to stay on top of that movement, meaning that it must grow many varieties to provide necessary retail and consumer options.
“Still, our business was originally based on the McIntosh, and so we have how to handle it down to a fine science,” he said. “If you don’t know how to handle the Mac, it’s likely that you’re not going to be successful with it.”
