Heavy rain in Victoria and New South Wales over the last three days has taken the shine off the Australian cherry season, which had until this week been looking like a bumper crop in most regions.
Rainfall up to 130mm was recorded in some areas, Young in New South Wales in particular, causing cracking in early fruit about to be harvested.
In Orange in southern New South Wales, a frost last month and this latest batch of rain have combined to take 25 per cent of the crop out of the running, according to grower Tim Hall of the Towac Fruit Export Cooperative.
“We had over 100mm in Orange,” he told Fruitnet.com. “Certainly the early varieties have been split. The later varieties are holding up so far, but that depends on how much rain we get from this point.”
Just across the Victorian border in Cobram, growers managed to avoid much damage, with the rain only hitting 29mm.
“I think in the scheme of things we were pretty lucky,” said Stephen Riseborough of Cherryhill Orchards. “Some areas had up to six inches (152mm), which is pretty devastating, and will put a dampener on exports.”
With the rain damage cutting back on shelf life, fruit due to be harvested in the next week or two are likely to be diverted to the domestic market.
“For ourselves it’s affected some varieties, which wouldn’t be export quality,” explained Mr Riseborough. “But once we get past them we’ll be back into clean fruit. There’s still some wet weather coming, though, so we’re still a bit nervous.”
The cool winter and spring this year have pushed back the season, meaning exports of Australian cherries have only just got underway, with early varieties like Sequoia and Royal Dawn hitting the market in small volumes. The first major early-season export variety, Ron’s Seedling, is about to start being picked this week.
To what extent the rain will affect exports is unknown at this stage, according to Hugh Molloy, general manager of marketer Antico.
“Last night the situation was looking good,” he told Fruitnet.com. “It depends on how much rain we get from now. The late season stuff still looks fine. We just need it to dry up a bit and get out there to check on things.”
He said growers will have a better picture of the impact later in the week.
