Pomewest Project Manager Susie Murphy White shares her insights from recent APAL South African Grower’s Tour

While the South African pome industry is experiencing a warming climate, the drive for quantity and quality is strong.  The mitigation techniques to address the effects of low chill, reducing soil moisture loss, and sun-damaged fruit were evident while visiting orchards in the Western Cape of South Africa.

Growers and industry professionals on the 2025 Future Orchards international study tour to South Africa had a fantastic opportunity to visit orchards, a packhouse, and a nursery across the Western Cape region, around Elgin, Grabouw, and Koue Bokkeveld.  The pome industry covers 38,007 ha, exporting to 86 countries from 1,155 growers.  The Elgin Grabouw area experiences low chill (500-800 chill units), colour development issues, smaller fruit size, sunburn, basal dominance, and requires rest-breaking agents.  In contrast, the Koue Bokkeveld area is higher in altitude and receives 1000-1500 chill units.

The varieties grown include many of the same varieties grown here; Royal Gala, Pink Lady, Top Red (red delicious), Fuji, Cripps Red, Kanzi plus Golden Delicious and Granny Smith.  Forty percent of the fresh apples are exported to Far East Asia, Middle East, Africa, UK and Russia.  Every apple has a market from class 1 and 2, to domestic grade and juice fruit with juice fruit proving profitable for growers.

We visited the Cape Sweet Nursery, established in 2019, to support investment in high-density orchards.  The nursery covered 2ha, producing over 230,000 trees grown in 7.5L bags and 3.5L containers.  They supplied a wide range of rootstocks using green-on-green tissue culture techniques.  A 1.8-2m tree could grow within 22 months.  The most common rootstocks were G778, M7, G757, G890, MM109 and M9.  This was evident in the orchards we visited, as most orchards had their own rootstock trial to assess how these trees perform in their orchard.

Vigorous trees that are basal dominant in the low chill areas were focused on producing quantity to meet market demands. Those orchards further away from the packhouse focused on quality and had invested in netting, reflective mulches, and leaf plucking to ensure colour development.

Given the shallow, high-shale-content soils, mounding is used to lift trees out of flood lines and create soil for growth. Vigorous rootstocks help cope with these challenging soil conditions. Under-tree mulching with barley straw, woody mulches, and green mulches is common to conserve moisture. We visited a regenerative grower using cover crops and green mulch (clovers and grasses) to increase yields and reduce fertilizer inputs.

The use of rest-breaking agents (dormancy breakers) was an essential part of survival in a low-chill growing environment. Numerous rest-breaking strategies were in play to ensure compact and productive flowering. The importance of cyanamide in the system was stated multiple times, with concerns about its European markets.

The tour highlighted South African growers' innovative techniques and strategies for adapting to climate challenges while maintaining high standards of quantity and quality. It provided valuable insights into the resilience and adaptability of the pome industry in the Western Capes region.

The group really appreciated the time the host orchards and consultants spent extending their expertise and hospitality during the week.

A big thank you to APAL for organising the tour through the Hort Frontiers-funded Future Orchards project. 

Thank you Pomewest for allowing me to attend and bring back my learnings.