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Signs of some Missouri grape damage
Missouri’s grape crop is in the budding stage and there are signs of damage from the harsh winter, “It’s been kind of mixed and it’s going to be kind of be an interesting spring. This year, we’re looking at anywhere from probably about 10% damage up to about 50% damage on some bud loss,” says Jim Anderson, director of the Missouri Wine & Grape Board.
Temperatures dropped as low as minus-20 in some areas of the state. He says the stress on the state’s grapes, however, has been cumulative, “I think there could be some kind of carryover, too, with the large crop last year, heat stress on it two years ago and drought and a combination of the extreme cold this year kind of lessened our bud numbers there on our grapes.”
But, he tells Brownfield Ag News, the damage is not as bad as further north, “Our friends in northern Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio – they didn’t have the lake effect to kind of support some of what they had in the past because the Great Lakes had frozen so a lot of those vineyards in that area have seen a lot of damage.”
Anderson says Missouri’s hybrid grapes (such as Norton and Traminette) are expected to hold up much better than some of the other varietals. Now, vineyards are just hoping they are out of the spring frost/freeze zone which, to this point, has not been severe.
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