10/04/05 Blossom thinning, apples, and peaches

Various Northwest tree fruit researchers keep busy with all sorts of projects designed to improve fruit production and quality. One of those avenues of research has been in the realm of blossom thinning. In other words, too many blossoms could mean too much undersized fruit come harvest time, and potentially less profit. Several tests have been conducted on blossom thinners on apples and other fruits over the years, including the research done by University of Idaho pomologist Dr. Essie Fallahi. He works at the Parma Research Station. FALLAHI: Blossom thinning is something that we have been doing for the last, at least, sixteen years that I have been here, and I was involved in other places with blossom thinning. We have done work with more than twenty different blossom thinners. Some of them are very new including tergetol that we tested here and now is being tested by our colleagues in other places and then we are going to try that with Doctor Black in Utah. Part of Dr. Fallahi's efforts stem from finding a replacement for elgetol, a previous blossom thinner that was not re-registered by the product manufacturer back in 1990. It appears turgetol has the potential to be that primary blossom thinner. FALLAHI: We did try these last three years tergetol in Washington, Utah, Colorado, and Idaho. And the results are just outstanding for peaches & for peaches and certain varieties of apples.