Another result of the abnormally cold spring we had this year. Some Honeycrisp in later blocks developed disorders associated with chilling injury – soft scald, CO2 injury, soggy breakdown, and internal browning. These are disorders that we would normally see in fruit coming out of storage that had been stored too cold. On very rare occasion, we might see some of this on fruit at harvest if it was a cold fall or in high elevation fruit.
These fruit, however, expressed symptoms on the tree as early as July (probably earlier, but first observed in July). A check of weather data for some of these blocks showed almost 300 hours of temperatures below which chilling injury can occur during the first 30 days after full bloom (May). Some days had 15 consecutive hours below the critical temperature.
Not cold enough to create the typical frost injury, but prolonged periods of temperatures in the mid-to-upper 30’s and low 40’s F.
I’ve never seen this develop on young fruitlets like this before, and hope I never do again. The long, cold spring of 2022 continues to be a harsh and unforgiving teacher.
