After a two-year hiatus, the Lake Ontario Fruit Program’s Summer Fruit Tour will resume with an in-person event this year, according to a news release from Cornell Cooperative Extension.

The tour is scheduled Thursday, Aug. 12 with stops at farms in Wayne County, including Morgan Farms in Marion and Mark Hermenet Fruit Farm in Williamson. Lunch and sponsor/equipment displays will be at B. Forman Park in Pultneyville.

Topics include:

—Rapid apple decline update.

—Fire blight management in difficult years.

—Why one grower converted from fresh to processing for some lower-value varieties.

—Precision crop load management, including the use of the fruit growth rate model, the results of ATS (ammonium thiosulfate) trials at bloom and their use with the pollen tube growth model, and trial results with the use of ACC (1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylic acid) as a late thinner.

—New plantings of high-value varieties at nearly super-spindle spacing.

—In-house nursery production, trellising, tree training and cultivar selection.

—Processing fruit production, including yields on several historically high production blocks and new plantings of processing varieties at high-density spacing.

More information is available online at: lof.cce.cornell.edu.

—by Jonelle Mejica