State Crops Could Be Affected By Odd April Weather

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(WEST LAFAYETTE) - Mercurial weather across the state will likely hamper the crops of Indiana fruit growers.

Purdue Horticulture Professor Bruce Bordelon says estimates put the state's peach crop at a near one hundred percent loss and show decimation of apple groves. Bordelon says warm weather encouraged buds on those plants to bloom, only to be dashed by sub-freezing weather during the last two weeks.

Bordelon says plants in the northern part of the state could be less aversely affected because the weather did not get as warm as it did farther south. He predicts the state's blueberry crop could be intact because the fruit resists the cold more readily.

Still, he says it's too soon to know what effect the cold will have on locally-grown fruit and guesses it'll take two to three weeks to analyze exactly what ill effects the frost has wrought.

Bordelon says crop prices may spike as a result of the lower yields, making it costlier to buy the fruit, but also more important to support Hoosier farmers who have less to sell.

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