If there's a contest Arkansas can win in Alabama, it's peaches.
Left to decide what to enter in this year's Chilton County Peach Festival competition, Mark Knight took the advice of his daughters. Of the best-looking fruit on his farm, they chose a couple of varieties of yellow peaches and a white variety with a genetic link to Arkansas.
"I don't believe any one of y'all," a flabbergasted Knight said. In years past, yellow peaches always took top prize, never white peaches, he said.
The White County variety, developed by Arkansas fruit researchers, took first place.
"We were really, pleasantly surprised with the color, size and texture," Knight said Wednesday over the phone . He had just returned from tending to the blackberries, peaches, plums and nectarines on his 60-acre plot in Chilton County, Alabama's premier peach-growing region.
Fifty varieties of peach trees dot M&M Farm, 16 of them white. Of those, three are fresh-market peaches patented by the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville: White River, White Rock and White County; all named after places in the Natural State.
John Clark, director of the UA System's Agriculture Division's fruit-breeding program, caught wind of the victory from a friend in Auburn, Ala. The friend was unsure which breed won, but based on the seasonality, Clark said it probably was the White County.
"It's really pretty," he said. The fruit has a reddish color, with hints of cream.
The origins of the winning peach date back to 1964, when the fruit-breeding program began. At the time, Gerber had a big plant in Fort Smith. To capitalize on that, the program started growing peaches for baby food, Clark said. To stand out, researchers began working with nectarines and white peaches.
In 1982, they obtained a sack of seeds from Rutgers University that carried the genetics of "slow-melting flesh," he said, which they later would move over to the White County peach, released in 2004.
The key difference between classic yellow peaches and white peaches is the level of acidity, or tartness. White-fleshed peaches are lower in acid and taste sweet whether firm or soft, which can be unappealing for some, Clark said.
"They are low-acid, but not as low as some, which makes it unique to taste," Knight said about the award-winning White County peaches. He also has several of the Arkansas program's peaches, nectarines and blackberries on his farm.
"We haven't found any duds in any of those," Knight said.
Each year, the judges at the Chilton County Peach Festival have about two hours to look over hundreds of peaches and arrange them from best to last; however, they don't taste them. Knight said mostly what they go by is color, size and presentation -- or how they are placed in a basket.
Each year is a challenge for Knight and others, but what set this one apart was the weather.
"We got an awful cold here," he said. "Wiped out a lot of folks."
While a little cold is welcome, three days of below-freezing temperatures in spring is unheard of, he said.
"I would say 50% would be a good crop," Knight said.
Meanwhile in Arkansas, the unusually wet spring has led to a "mixed bag" of peaches, said Amanda McWhirt, a horticulture crop specialist at the UA Agriculture Division. Good irrigation can yield nice, quality peaches, but if farmers don't stay on top of it, diseases can be a byproduct, she said.
"Hopefully consumers will go out and take advantage of the good crops this year," McWhirt said.
Over the years, peaches have fallen out of favor with growers. From 2003 to 2015, peach-bearing acreage in Arkansas fell from 1,600 to 550 acres, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And the acreage is even lower today, McWhirt said.
"Between 200 and 300 is more accurate," she said.
Business on 07/19/2019