The first season of Reportajes en Smartcherry has been a huge success; with episodes such as “The Perfect Storm”, “The Cherry Route”, “The Kick-Off”, among others, this format has earned an important place in the cherry industry. This Thursday, “What Accounts Do We Take?” premiered, an audiovisual piece that provided a complete summary of the recent cherry season.
The protagonists? The specialist advisor on cherry production and technical director of Avium, Carlos Tapia; the specialist advisor on deciduous fruit trees, Jordi Casas; and the advisor and consultant on stone fruit and cherries, Walter Masman.
«In general, Chile does not reach, in terms of volume, the estimate that was made; there is a drop that practically reaches 20 percent of what was stipulated, where probably if we analyze case by case in terms of producers, this drop in terms of potential can be framed between 20 and 80 percent in some cases,» Masman said.
The recent report from Frutas de Chile estimated that 413,979 tons of cherries were exported during the recent 2023-2024 campaign, which represents a decrease of 0.3 percent compared to the previous season.
«From a projection of around 100 million boxes that we had as a country, we finally ended up with 82 million and something, I don't know if it needs to be adjusted a bit: we had a drop according to the forecast, but that drop was initially thought to be more terrible, that we would not reach 70 million boxes», recalled Jordi Casas.
A complex season
The report also showed the reality of three orchards; one in Linderos, Metropolitan region, and two in the Maule region, in Pichingal, Molina, and in the Sarmiento sector, in Curicó.
«I think that for all the producers it was a very complicated season, in our personal case, thank God we were able to have 40% more production compared to the previous season, I think we were very blessed in that sense compared to the other producers, because it was a season where the floods, a complicated spring affected a large number of producers in the area, both here in the area where we are in Molina and in Sagrada Familia, early areas, late areas, I think it affected us all equally., but we were able to get through the season," explained Alejandro Molinos, Agricultural Manager of the La Ermita Farm, located in Pichingal, Molina commune.
Ignacio Botto, technical advisor at Avium, spoke with Alejandro and Félix Molinos about the recent season; here they did not suffer flooding or cracking due to rain, and production was even radically better than in recent years, a situation that unfortunately was not repeated in all cherry production areas.
«As a team, what we had to face was a season that started with bad cold, we were also accompanied by rainfall that was not normal, we were used to small events, we were accompanied by very heavy rains, something that had not happened before, late rains, that is, quite a few factors came together that we were not used to analyzing in any season», said Avium technical advisor Ignacio Botto.
Walter Masman, advisor and consultant, also visited Sergio Quezada, General Manager of the El Carmelo field, located in Linderos; they analyzed the season and discussed the effects that the agroclimatic variables had on the orchards.
«It was a rather anomalous season, because we started with a very bad start to the summer, the break never started, we were on May 1st with the leaves stuck together, so we were already quite complicated in that sense, it seems that we started off badly. A flowering that I can exaggerate in some varieties lasted a month, thirty days, it was less, but it was long; varieties like the bing where we had two very marked floors, where the upper third had no flowers and below it was already starting to set, those gave us 3 thousand kilos per hectare, from an average of 9,000 kilos in bing for this area and in Santina we were also worried because something similar was seen in this area, then in spring: it rains», commented Sergio Quezada.
In the Sarmiento area, Curicó commune, Maule region, they also felt the impact of the agro-climatic variables; this was commented by advisor Jordi Casas, together with Críspolo Gutiérrez, general manager of Agrícola Los Tilos.
«In general, in Santina we had a drop of around 30 percent; we saw that during the season, in winter, we did not manage to reach the cold hours that we needed, we did reach the portions (…) we reached around 42 portions, but at the time of making the decision that we made about cyanamide, we still did not complete the cold hours, nor in the entire season,» Crispolo Gutierrez explained.
New cherry season
Although heat waves occurred during the summer of 2024, they occurred later than in previous summers, a factor that the Avium team has already analyzed, looking ahead to the next season: «There is an important factor that we have studied, which is everything that means thermal water stress, defined as a stress index that we began to measure, to study and it is an important point to analyze; the summer of 2023, definitely, was the summer in which we cumulatively obtained the highest stress index of the last ten summers, which is an important factor that we believe greatly influenced the effects of the 2023 harvest, especially in the warmer areas, however this year we did the same monitoring and the summer of 2024, corresponding to the 2023-2024 season, was the summer in which we obtained the lowest accumulated stress index, with respect to the post-harvest period of the last 10 years, so of the 4-5 most important factors of the productive equation from the climatic point of view, we already have a favor that plays in our favor, for now, which was this moderate potential "of thermal and hydric stress in summer," concluded Carlos Tapia.
For the 2023-2024 season, the presence of the "La Niña" phenomenon is expected, which implies low rainfall; it is clear that extreme weather events are here to stay and the cherry industry will have to learn to produce with them.
You can relive the report sponsored by Corteva Agriscience, UPL and Chemie Agro below:
