Rains at harvest time in 2012 and 2013 affected the date crop in the Coachella Valley, and although the weather had been good for the start of the 2014 harvest through the first week in September, there was a possibility of rain early the following week, according to Sean Dougherty, vice president of Hadley Date Gardens Inc. in Thermal, CA.

“It could be light rain or heavy,” and if heavy, it would be the third year in a row, Dougherty told The Produce News Sept. 5.

The crop has been impacted by the weather in the past, which caused some severe damage, and even though the possibility exists of that happening again, Dougherty said the company still maintains its high-quality standards.

“We won’t compromise on that,” he added. “We would rather be very short in our ability to supply the market” than to put substandard fruit on the market, he said. “It is our mantra to take that high road. That does affect our ability at times” to meet market demands, “but we won’t deviate from that.”

The company’s focus on quality extends further. It starts with cultural practices throughout the growing season, beginning with good orchard sanitation and proper water management. It also involves such practices as the use of mesh bags over the dates to keep birds and insects away from the fruit, as well as covers to mitigate damage from rain.

Using the mesh bags has been a standard practice for Medjools in the industry for some time, “because the Medjools can drop, and the bag is able to catch them,” Dougherty said. Fruit drop is not a concern with the Deglets, but the industry is now moving toward using the bags on Deglets in an effort to prevent damage and improve fruit quality.

“That is relatively new and becoming more widespread in terms of its application,” said Dougherty. Some experimentation is still ongoing as to the best type, color and size of mesh bags for the purpose, but “we are committed to seeing that becoming a normal practice.”

Once the fruit is harvested, it goes into a grading operation. At Hadley, “we put many eyes on it,” Dougherty said. “We believe fully that the human element to be able to see and sort and segregate is critical. Electronic machines with optical scanners are fine, but we rely heavily on putting a lot of people on that, and that helps keep our quality standards and our cut on the fruit between retail grade and the industrial grade. We do a very good job on maintaining that grading excellence.”

When the fruit come “to our facility for processing,” he said, “we put that through all of the food-safety systems that we have in place for our facility. We are third-party audited. We have the HACCP in place and the good manufacturing practices in place.”

Even after the fruit has been harvested, graded, processed and packaged, “we are constantly looking at the product again, doing some final grading out,” he said.

The company maintains a quality control lab for internal testing, and “we are sending the dates out for microbiological testing as well. So we have really raised our standards as a company in terms of the quality control and the safety of the dates that we put into the marketplace.”

Hadley Date Gardens began in 1931, although some of that history “is tied to some acquisitions,” Dougherty said. It is a multigenerational family business.

“My in-laws are the owners,” Dougherty said. John Keck, chief executive officer, is the second generation, and his son, Albert Keck, named after his grandfather Albert Keck, is the third generation.

A fourth generation of Kecks could soon be involved in the business, as “Albert has sons” who, when they graduate from college “might be entertaining” a career with the family date business. Already, Dougherty’s oldest son, Sean Patrick Dougherty Jr., is working with the company, heading up food safety, HACCP, GMP and quality systems, Dougherty said.