With the picking of the California Navel orange crop under way, the pre-season estimate of almost a 10 percent increase in volume appears to be accurate, according to Bob Blakely, vice president for California Citrus Mutual, the trade association that represents most of the California orange acreage.

Blakely said that though volume in the early season isn’t as great as it was last year at the same time, the crop appears to be sizing well and there is no reason to believe the September estimate released by the California Department of Food & Agriculture and relying on work by the National Agricultural Statistics Service is wrong.

In early September, this year’s California crop was estimated at 86 million cartons, with all but 3 million of that coming from the Central Valley. Blakely said if that total is realized, it would represent an 8.5 percent increase over last year’s volume.A California orange grove. (Photo courtesy of Homegrown Organic Farms)

The NASS and CDFA forecast is based on the results of the 2015-16 Navel Orange Objective Measurement Survey, which was conducted from July to September. During that survey, the researchers randomly sampled trees throughout California to determine fruit set per tree, fruit diameter, trees per acre and bearing acreage. The numbers were then crunched in a computerized statistical model to estimate carton production. This year’s survey data indicated a fruit set per tree of 412 in California’s 122,000 acres of bearing trees. That number is 20 percent higher than the five-year average of 336. The average diameter of the fruit was also about 5 percent above the five-year average.

Blakely cautioned that the pre-season estimate doesn’t always materialize at the end of the year. Last year, it was only off by about 2.5 percent, but the previous year the final number was more than 12 percent below the pre-season estimate. In four of the past five years, the final number was below the preseason number, but that is not always the case. In 2011-12, which in fruit-set-per-tree is very similar to this year, the crop actually ended up 3.5 percent greater than the pre-season estimate.

The CCM executive said there are a lot of factors that go into making the final crop. Last year’s crop started out fast and furious but ultimately, the early maturity ended up in some fruit not being able to get packed before it passed its optimum ripeness.

The well-publicized California drought does not appear to have hurt this year’s on-tree crop, but Blakely said it has resulted in some growers speeding up their replanting plans. With reduced water deliveries, some groves have been yanked maybe a year or two ahead of schedule because new groves do not have the water needs of a producing grove. “We have estimated that 20,000 to 25,000 acres of citrus have been pulled statewide,” Blakely said.

The vast majority of that acreage, however, has been replanted — most likely with Navels or Mandarins, an increasingly popular citrus variety. Led by the popularity of easy-peel fruit, Mandarin acreage and production is on the rise in the Golden State.

Blakely said if it is a normal year, citrus will be harvested from October into July, with the January to April time frame being the peak of the season. California is bracing for above-average rainfall for the first time in five years as the El Nino condition is expected to drop a lot of water, especially in the southern half of the state. The Central Valley runs from the south to the north but the majority of citrus groves are in the southern half. For the most part, Blakely said the biggest impact from above-average rain will be a disruption in harvest. “If some low-lying groves get too wet to harvest that can disrupt things, but the fruit doesn’t generally get damaged.”

In any event, rain will be a very welcome sight. In a perfect world, Blakely said the El Nino storms would dump an above-average amount of snow in the mountains allowing for the reservoirs to be filled and for the snowmelt to provide great runoff next spring and summer. “But we’ll take the rain whenever and wherever we can get it. We also need it on the valley floor to recharge the ground water.”

Blakely said the forecasters are estimating that the rainstorms will begin in late December and continue through the spring.