Very small red dots

Panonychus ulmi (Dept Agriculture UK)

This is the European red spider mite (Panonychus ulmi), ("ácaro vermelho europeu"), but it has emigrated. It is now found all over the world, where it is something of a nuisance. It feeds on plants, and unlike many invertebrates, it`s not fussy. Add a very high reproductive rate and you have a pest.

In Brazil it is mainly found in the south, where like many European migrants it finds the climate more congenial.  There it is a major pest of apples, pears, peaches and vines, overwintering as eggs on the tree trunks.  In the spring the eggs hatch and nymphs  start crawling over the plant. Now, these mites are very very small, about 0.7 mm, so you wouldn´t think it would matter much, but there are a LOT of mites. Each female only lives about 2-3 weeks, but can lay up to 50 eggs. Gradually the leaves become spotted, then bronzed and they fall off. Infested flowers often produce no fruit.

Incidentally, mites are NOT insects, they´ve got eight legs and they are distantly related to spiders. Including the ability to spin webs.

 Neoseiulus californicus

The main predators of mites are other mites, predatory mites.  Since 1992 hundreds of thousands of Neoseiulus californicus have been reared in huge plastic greenhouses in Brazil and released into orchards. They don´t eat all the mites, which is a good thing as then they themselves would starve. They just kill enough to leave the tress healthy. With luck you get a balance.

Apples

You can grow virtually anything in Brazil (apart apparently from grapefruit, to my chagrin). This includes apples ("maçãs")  though until the 1970s hardly anyone bothered, there was only about 100 hectares of commercial orchards in the 1960s. This is surprising given a) the number of German and Pomeranian immigrants, many of whom were farmers, and b) imports of apples at the time accounted for about 100 million US dollars. Following considerable government and state investment in the 70s there are now 37,000 ha under cultivation, with 3,450 growers, and 1,253 thousand tons of apples were picked in 2009/2010. This investment included the importation of guaranteed virus free material from the famous research station at East Malling, England, which alone increased productivity by 25-50%.

 Granny Smith apple

The commonest variety at the start was Golden Delicious and some Granny Smith, but these have been mainly replaced by Gala and Fuji, which make up 90% of production between them. In fact, it is often the redder types of these varieties, such as Royal Gala, Imperial Gala, Maxi Gala, Brookfield, Fuji Suprema, Fuji Seleta and Mishima, as these export better. Another development was increased use of "drawfing rootstocks". When you see an apple tree you are not seeing one tree but two, the bottom half from one variety, the top from another, joined together as seedlings. This allows you to get strong healthy trees (from the bottom part, the root stock and delicious apples, from the top). Another advantage of this is that if you choose the right rootstock, you can get dwarf trees, an idea developed at East Malling in the 1930s. Admittedly these have fewer apples per tree, but you can have a lot more trees per hectare, from roughly 600 to 2,500. This means more apples per hectare, and they are a lot easier to pick!

Fuji apples

Now, one peculiarity of apples is that they need a winter, or rather they need a period of cold, to induce the production of buds and flowers for next years crop. Gala and Fuji, for example, need more than 600 chilling hours (hours less than 7 C) to give a good crop. Even in the south of Brazil where there can be frosty nights, and even snow some days, this isn´t guaranteed, so sprays are used to mimic this as in parts of Europe. Commercially you also need to add bee hives to the orchard, as otherwise there simply won't be enough bees to pollinate the flowers! Of course, that does give you honey as a particularly delicious byproduct.

One emerging trend in Brazil is cider. This tends to be based on French rather than English techniques, but made much faster, without much maturing. Brazilian cider, like Brazilian wine, is made with extra sugar and can seem sweet to north European tastes.