“We expected that Tommy Atkins volumes would be up by about 10% this season, but just where did this enormous Tommy Atkins crop come from?”

Genome editing has been used to destroy a virus that lurks inside many of the bananas grown in Africa. Other teams are trying to use it to make the Cavendish bananas sold in supermarkets worldwide resistant to a disease that threatens to make it impossible to grow this variety commercially in future.

The 2018 South African macadamia crop ended on a positive note with a record crop of 56 550 tonnes of inshell macadamias (measured at 1.5% kernel moisture content). This is approximately 4 000 tonnes higher than the previous estimate that was issued in September. The demand for macadamias remained strong and the kernel market in particular showed great appetite for these high-valued nuts. Approximately 67% of the South African crop was processed to kernel and the remaining 33% exported as inshell.

The situation in the European table grape market has been quite challenging. Because of the large volumes supplied by Peru, German, Dutch and French traders have at times had to deal with extremely low prices, especially at the beginning of the season.

2018 was an ‘on year’ for the avocado. The UK and Europe alone consumed over 650 million kilos of avocados and the European avocado market remains one of the fastest growing markets worldwide.

It’s cooler and wetter in northeast Limpopo than it has been for a while after rain this weekend but the Tzaneen Dam in the Letaba River is nevertheless lower than last week, a discomforting 12.7% full. The Middle Letaba Dam stands at about 6% (and hasn’t been close to capacity in a long time).