In areas of Curicó, an important center for the production of this fruit at a national level, it is seen that some orchards will only be able to harvest 20 or 30% of what was initially budgeted, due to storms and "unscheduled" rainfall.
And the loss of early cherry production due to spring rains continues to increase…
If in early November it was thought that the loss was 30%, due to broken cherries, today Fedefruta, the federation that represents all fruit producers in Chile, detects a general decrease of 50% of early harvests, mainly in the Royal Dawn and Santina varieties.
“Today, as we finish the work on early cherries in the O'Higgins Region, we are seeing losses of 50% in the harvest of these varieties, with areas such as Curicó reporting losses of even 60 and 80%,” said the president of Fedefruta and cherry producer from Malloa, Jorge Valenzuela Trebilcock. “The situation has become clearer now that we are packing and transporting the fruit, and with what we have seen in recent days, we believe that cherry export estimates will naturally be below 80 million boxes.”
The fruit leader also mentioned that this decrease was due to the few hours of cold accumulated during winter, which complicated flowering and setting in early varieties.
“Now that we are in December, the volume of cherry harvests in the different regions of our country is increasing exponentially every day,” Jorge Valenzuela projects. “That is why we remind all producers that the most important thing is to maintain our quality and be consistent, so we must work hard but also calmly, hoping that we will have a few more stable weeks from a climatic point of view, to face the peak of the harvests.”
The guild, through its affiliated associations, is also observing the effects of the recent rains on the upcoming table grape harvests in the central area, and also blueberries from Parral, Maule Region, to the south.The rains generate widespread effects on fruit growing and we cannot forget other areas that are equally important for agricultural regions," the main representative of the fruit growers concluded.
