the harvest before pick-up to determine the best option
for further processing when deciding whether to deliver
as inshell or meats to earn the maximum value. Your
Blue
Diamond
Regional Manager is a valuable resource who
can help with this decision.
The table to the left presents the financial impact
of varying reject levels on a 2,500 per acre yield,
produced as meats at $2.50 per pound and includes
the almond loss during the harvest and shelling process.
When calculated, a one percent reject level can produce
a reduction in value of nearly $160 per acre; at five
percent, the loss is more than $1,000 per acre, and at
10 percent, the loss is more than $1,700 per acre!
An additional threat imposed by excessive reject levels
comes in the form of potential increases in aflatoxin
levels resulting from excessive worm damage. Aflatoxin
is a carcinogen by-product of the fungus Aspergillus
flavus, which can be introduced into the kernel by the
NOW. Controlling reject levels can have a definite
effect in reducing aflatoxin levels within the crop.
Chipped and Broken
Chipped and broken levels in meat deliveries probably
earn the lowest degree of a grower’s attention. Most
growers believe they have the greatest direct effect on
foreign material and reject levels, and the least on the
chipped and broken percentage. However, chipped and
broken levels have been earning an increasing degree of
scrutiny by
Blue Diamond’s
buyers in the past few years
and growers’ practices in the orchards can play a role in
the amount of damage their almonds sustain.
Grower deliveries are scored by a quarter-inch chip,
where a total of one-quarter square inch of the kernel
beneath the peel has been exposed. Recently, the
buyers have been increasingly shifting their standards
to a one-eighth-inch chipped level. At
Blue Diamond
,
we have continued to use the USDA standard of the
quarter-inch chip as the basis for grading grower
deliveries. Our research has shown that there is a seven
to one relationship between an eighth-inch and quarter-
inch chipped and broken levels. That means for every
percentage point of a quarter-inch chipped and broken,
there will be approximately seven percentage points
of an eighth-inch. Buyers are interested in one-eighth
chipped levels at and below the middle teens, which
translates into a quarter-inch chipped levels at or below
two percent. This was the driving force behind the Q+
Grade category for Nonpareil meats implemented
several years ago, which set a maximum chipped and
broken level of two percent.
While it may seem that the bar continues to be set
higher and higher, many growers have met the challenge
and have been able to deliver a significant proportion
of their Nonpareil meats with a chipped and broken
level at or below two percent. In the 2017 crop, 50%
of all Nonpareil meats were graded at or below two
percent chipped and broken and 56 percent of these
deliveries qualified for the Q+ Grade. Unfortunately,
nearly 30 percent of these same deliveries were
graded as Standard “S1” due to excessive rejects. As an
example of the impacts of NOW activity in the 2017
crop, less than 12 percent of the deliveries graded at or
4 3
J U L Y – A U G U S T 2 0 1 8
