The complexities presented by the 2023-2024 season, mainly in terms of climate, made the 2023-2024 cherry season one of the most difficult in the history of production in Chile. Advisors and producers have already made an assessment of what happened in the orchards, however we wanted to know what the specialists' assessment was regarding the condition and quality of the fruit at its destination; in this context, we spoke with Jéssica Rodríguez, expert post-harvest advisor at Trío Kimün.
What are the main factors that make the post-harvest of Chilean cherries so admired?
I think it is the teamwork, everything that is done in the field to have a good quality product, with good storage capacity and then what the entire packaging industry does, worrying about every detail with conservation technologies.
What are the main challenges of cherry post-harvest?
We are delivering a large volume and when one delivers a large volume one has to be increasingly rigorous in terms of quality and more than in quality in the consistency of that quality that is delivered; opening channels, delivering in different places so as not to concentrate it in a single place, I think that is something extremely important and obviously not neglecting what we have already done in the orchard and in packaging.
How do you evaluate this season?
My assessment of this season is very good, even though we started off a little weaker with the Santi, which was hit so hard by the rain events. There have been a lot of complaints about the quality that arrived because it was difficult to clean, there was obviously a lot of rot and cracks due to the effect of the rain, but clearly after this variety the results of Lapins, Bins, Regina, and Kordia are much better. There is always a little something, obviously, and for the season we had with all the quite adverse weather conditions, it is a very good quality product, it is arriving well, but the great fear we had that it would arrive with high levels of rot throughout the season did not happen, which means that the industry was able to react to something that could have been a big problem, and that today is a minority complaint.
