Lowdina Orchard at a loss as to why its apricot crop is struggling

Lowdina Orchard has experienced a difficult apricot season, with its owner, Ian Newnham, admitting the fruit is a hard one to grow.

Tasmania produces around 350 metric tonnes of apricots each year, with the state representing 14 per cent of Australia’s total production.

Lowdina produces typically between 60 and 80 tonnes of apricots each season.

But Mr Newnham said the orchard only produced 30 tonnes this year.

“That’s two years in a row of very light crops,” he said.

“The trees aborted a lot of the fruit buds in the first half of spring before flowering.”

Lowdina Orchard tapped two agronomists to figure out why the trees did not produce as much fruit, but Mr Newnham said they still had no answers.

“We think it might have been wind, because there was some gnarly wind in spring, but we don’t know.

“It wasn’t frost, it wasn’t chemical, it wasn’t drought and it wasn’t because of rain.

“We’re at a bit of a loss at the moment.

“Some trees were okay and had a bit of a crop on them, and then there were trees with absolutely nothing.”

Mr Newnham said that apricots represented around a quarter of Lowdina Orchard’s production, with cherries making up the rest.

Usually, around 30 per cent of their apricots are sold within Tasmania and the rest is sent to the mainland.

But because of the lower yield this year, around half of the fruit stayed in Tasmania.

“We couldn’t meet demand this year,” Mr Newnham said.

“It’s embarrassing when you only get half a crop and you have to decide who to supply to.

“We ended up cutting everyone back a little bit and made everyone unhappy.”

Mr Newnham said that growing apricots was two to three times harder than cherries.

“I can teach someone to prune a cherry tree in 10 minutes and probably a year or two to prune an apricot tree.

“It takes a couple of seasons for them to be able to look at a tree and cut.

“It takes practice and time.”

Picking apricots is also more difficult than cherries.

However, Mr Newnham said that even after his retirement – which he expects to occur soon – Lowdina would always grow apricots.

“We’ll scale back and just supply the local market here in Tasmania; the people who have supported us when we needed support.”

Mr Newnham said Lowdina was the largest grower of the moorpark apricot variety in Australia.

“We don’t have any of the newer varieties.

“A lot of them look better, but they don’t taste better.

“We stick with the traditional moorpark because that’s what our customers like and want.”