Feb 6, 2025

Growing the right grape

Growing the right varieties that benefit consumers as well as growers, ensuring adequate labor and battling pests and diseases are the biggest challenges brothers George and Richard Matoian face.

The two run Matoian Brothers, a Fresno, California, table grape growing operation.

While labor is the biggest worry for growing table grapes, just about any other produce crop would require less input work and focus, said Richard Matoian.

“It’s more of all the regulations surrounding the ability to grow, whether it be laws related to pesticides and labor,” Matoian said. “I would say regulation is death by a thousand paper cuts. It’s not one single regulation that will do you in. It’s all of them accumulating on top of one another that can make it difficult.”

With the complex H-2A system, the Matotians employ their own people as well as contract labor. Matoian doubts many table grape growers employ H-2A. “If you’re having to rely on H-2A for what we’re growing, we wouldn’t be able to,” he said. “It’s all the different things you have to do to be able to qualify to utilize the workers.”

Those requirements include advertising for workers, paying them, continually increasing Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR), providing transportation and housing. Table grape challenges

“This is what has caused many people to change their commodity mix — the cost and availability of labor,” Matoian said. “People are looking for commodities that can be more highly mechanized. That’s always an important consideration.”

As opposed to growing winegrapes or raisin grapes, table grape production requires crews in the field throughout the year performing labor tasks, including removing non-grape growing shoots, pinching bunches on shoots to limit bunch vine vigor and tipping to limit bunch length and maintain compactness.

Also laborious is girdling, the removal of phloem and cambium layers without digging or gouging into the white fibrous, wood tissue so plant nutrients remain at the top of the vine, making for larger grapes.

Unlike growers of other types of grapes or fruit going to processing, table grape growers experience additional challenges because fruit must possess eye appeal for shoppers. Table grapes require more spraying with more products than other grapes or even other produce.

“It becomes a challenge in table grapes to make sure you have a blemish-free product,” Matoian said. “Disease and insect control of them is critically important. We can’t stand to have a little bit of powdery mildew or a little insect damage. We have to make sure we’re always looking at managing and growing table grapes to a higher quality level, free of blemishes and pests.”

Pest, disease threat

Major pests the Matoians deal with include mealy bugs, which exude a sooty mold excrement, and thrips, which cause scarring.

Matoian recommends inspecting for pests and taking many preventive control measures.

“If they are in a bunch, you’re basically done with,” he said. Because of the region’s relative humidity and temperature conditions, powdery mildew is a big challenge faced by table grape growers.

Careful monitoring and proper spraying and irrigation techniques are important.

Pest control advisers examine trees and provide recommendations.

“Our focus is making sure we have the plant nutrition correct,” he said. “The soils may not have all the right nutrients in them.”

The Matoians have been performing many soil applications of nutrients. It’s a reason the farm is participating in a USDA composting program, which provides financial incentives for growers to compost and plant cover crops that add compost into the ground to build organic matter.

“Where we are growing, we have lighter soils, which tend to be lower in organic matter,” he said. “Composting is a very beneficial component.”

Tech aid

Though table grapes require much manual labor, growers still utilize a lot of technology. Soil moisture sensors report if the vines and nut trees possess ample water.

While the Matoians aren’t using drones, they do read satellite imagery results to determine vineyard stress levels. To determine the optimum pest spraying times, the Matoians use degree days.

Insect traps are monitored, while sound machines or flashing electronic lights deter root-eating pocket gophers, as well as coyotes, which chew drip irrigation. Those animals are the biggest wildlife problems.

Proprietary, patented varieties which possess interesting flavors, produce more volume, larger-sized berries or require fewer inputs or less preparatory work are of utmost importance to the brothers.

Green, red, purple and ivory varieties are grown instead of Thompson Seedless, a former industry mainstay. Sweet Globe, a large green seedless, replaced the seeded Red Globe; Jack’s Salute is a red variety; and the Matoians are in their third year of growing Solbrio, an early midseason black seedless.

While other trellis systems are available, the Matoians have found success growing their grapes on a metal V trellis system with 52 inch cross arms on a bilateral cordon system.

The brothers grew up on a family farm with roots traced to 1928. Their father grew vegetables but eventually transitioned to grapes dried into raisins. George was a fresh fruit broker, selling table grapes, tree fruit and citrus, while Richard worked in ag trade association management, including as president/CEO of the American Pistachio Growers.

Looking into ag-related investments, the two’s ag experience aided them in being more vertically integrated than other small growers when they started their company in 1997.

“It’s one thing to just be a grower and have to turn everything over. To be able to sell what you grow is an important consideration,” Richard said. “That’s what made all the things click together.”

In 2020, the duo began planting pistachios.

For Matoian, there’s a joy in farming.

“It’s seeing how at the end of the day we produce something that’s unique, tasty, delicious and good for you,” he said. “And we do it in a manner that we know we have added to, instead of taking away from, the environment around us.”

Matoian Brothers’ George and Richard Matoian have been growing table grapes since the late 1990s.

The red, green and other table grape varieties Matoian Brothers grows have replaced Thompson Seedless, a former industry mainstay.

Labor, pest and disease and variety management help Matoian Bros. succeed