Central Valley citrus growers were able to make it through the recent cold front relatively unscathed. At World Ag Expo last week, President and CEO of California Citrus Mutual, Casey Creamer explained that the cold temperatures that came through recently weren’t too tough on growers.
“The cold spell that kind of hit us last week and it’s still kind of staying a little bit colder at night has really not been a problem for us considering we’re later on in the season,” Creamer noted. “The rinds are a little bit thicker; we’ve got more sugars in the fruit and so really it’s actually been a beneficial thing even though we’ve had several nights of below-freezing weather.”
As winter remained relatively mild, there was some concern about what that may mean for quality. Growers typically need more instances of cold overnight temperatures than what was experienced this year. “We haven’t really had any bad reports, but we could have used a little bit more cold weather earlier in the season,” said Creamer.
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