JOHNSTON, S.C. —
Four generations of growing peaches in South Carolina have taught the Yonce family where to plant trees for the best crop, how to prune for the best yield and what to do to in a late freeze to prevent a devastating frost.
But what the Yonces and thousands of other peach growers still don’t know is this: How does a peach know when the cold winter weather is over and it is time to grow?
A group of Clemson University researchers is trying to find the answer.
“It’s an interesting phenomenon,” Clemson plant biologist Doug Bielenberg said. “These plants count the cold hours and days. If it gets warm for a bit, they stop, and then they pick up counting where they left off.”
The concept has been known for decades in the plant world as chill hours. What Bielenberg is trying to figure out is how a plant has this memory for cold weather and which genes control the process.
If scientists learn out how to manipulate the peach’s chill hours, the research could be groundbreaking. By reducing the hours, plants could be grown in a large number of climates across the earth. For peach farmers, it could mean getting larger, juicer varieties into stores faster, Bielenberg said
Peaches are ideal for this kind of research because they have a fairly simple genetic structure and are closely related to a number of other fruits, such as berries, apples and plums, Bielenberg said.
Peach farmers are watching the research carefully. Blooms are just starting to come out on the earliest varieties, meaning Larry Yonce will again hang on to the weather forecast through April, when he can be sure freezing temperatures are over until the fall.
“The weather controls our destiny, basically,” said Yonce, who has been growing peaches for four decades. The family business is J.W. Yonce & Sons farm, founded by his grandfather in 1932 in Edgefield County.
Yonce’s 3,000-acre site is the second-largest peach farm in the second-highest peach-producing state in the country, behind California. The area produced cotton for decades before the boll weevil wiped them out. Farmers along the rolling hills of the ridge of South Carolina eventually turned to peaches.
The fruit was perfect for the area. Winter nights are cold enough for the chemical reactions that make peaches sweet, but not cold enough to kill the fruit as it grows. Peaches later need warm to hot weather for the fruit to mature. That’s why the Georgia joins California and South Carolina as the nation’s leading peach-producing states.
Research from Clemson and the University of Georgia has helped up farmers considerably over the years. One of the Yonce farm’s best-sellers is a peach, developed through years of breeding, that doesn’t need as many chill hours so it ripens in May, but has the color, texture and sweetness of peaches that used to not hit the market until July.
But with all the science, there is still plenty of uncertainty in peach farming. Last year’s crop looked promising until a warmer-than-usual March and April left the fruit without enough chilling hours to reach its best taste and appearance. And peach farmers like the Yonces get downright depressed when the April 7 freeze of 2007 is brought up. Temperatures fell into the low 20s on the ridge. The state produced just 9,000 tons of peaches that year, compared with an already fairly sparse crop of 60,000 tons the year before.
In the family’s orchards, Chris Yonce points to blooms already on the tree. What should become a peach is already inside, no larger than an eyelash and about a quarter of the length. In about a month, roughly a third of the blooms will be removed from the tree by hand to maximize yield, a process that will go on for weeks on each of the farm’s roughly 500,000 trees.
Yonce takes his knife and cuts open a bloom. The tiny fleck inside is black. That flower would yield no peach, but Yonce wouldn’t have known until after the pruning.
“Growing peaches is like legalized gambling,” he said.
And that’s something that science will likely never be able to change.
National, International News
Related Photos
-
South Carolina Peach Council Executive Amy London, left, and peach farmer Chris Yonce, right, look at peach blossoms on Yonce's farm on Friday, Feb. 22, 2013, in Johnston, S.C. Peach blossoms have just started to sprout as peach farmers enter the critical time of the growing season. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Collins) The Associated Press
Discussion
Clemson research tackles peach-growing mystery
- National, International News
-
-
Official: Broken rail eyed in Conn. train crash
The commuter train derailment and collision that left dozens injured outside New York City was not the result of foul play, officials said Saturday, but a fractured section of rail is being studied to determine if it is connected to the accident.
-
FBI searches apartment in ricin letter case
Authorities in hazardous materials suits searched a downtown Spokane apartment Saturday, investigating the recent discovery of a pair of letters containing the deadly poison ricin.
-
Up to 60 injured after car drives into Va. parade
An elderly driver plowed into dozens of hikers marching in a Saturday parade in a small Virginia mountain town and investigators were looking into whether he suffered a medical emergency before the accident.
-
Authorities: Hofstra student was killed by police
A Hofstra University student being held in a headlock at gunpoint by an intruder was accidently shot and killed by a police officer who had responded to the home invasion at an off-campus home, police said Saturday.
-
Last-minute fortune seekers buy Powerball tickets
It’s all about the odds.
With four out of every five possible combinations of Powerball numbers in play, someone is almost sure to win the game’s highest jackpot, a windfall of hundreds of millions of dollars — and that’s after taxes. -
Today in History for Sunday, May 19, 2013
Today is Sunday, May 19, the 139th day of 2013. There are 226 days left in the year.
-
Bombs targeting Sunnis kill at least 76 in Iraq
Bombs ripped through Sunni areas in Baghdad and surrounding areas Friday, killing at least 76 people in the deadliest day in Iraq in more than eight months. The major spike in sectarian bloodshed heightened fears the country could again be veering toward civil war.
-
Tornado-ravaged Texas town to start recovery
Residents whose homes were torn apart or blown away by a North Texas deadly tornado can soon return to retrieve what belongings may be left and start cleaning up, authorities said Friday.
-
Conn. commuter trains collide; 60 go to hospitals
Two commuter trains serving New York City collided in Connecticut during Friday’s evening rush hour, sending 60 people to the hospital, including five with critical injuries, Gov. Dannel Malloy said.
-
Record Powerball jackpot inspires office pools
In workplaces across the nation, Americans are inviting their colleagues to chip in $2 for a Powerball ticket and a shared daydream.
- More National, International News Headlines
-
