This season's Italian apple crop will be lower than initially forecast in August, according to new figures released during a meeting of the World Apple & Pear Association during this year's Interpoma trade fair in Bolzano, South Tyrol.
The data, published by Italian apple industry body Assomela, suggests total apple production in the country will be around 2.07m tonnes for 2010/11, a 7 per cent decrease compared with the volume produced in 2009/10.
The revised forecast is also 4 per cent lower than the 2.17m tonnes anticipated by Italy's national topfruit association at the Prognosfruit meeting in Kiev, Ukraine, back in August.
That figure was itself some 3 per cent lower than the 2.24m tonnes Italy produced in 2009/10.
In Italy's largest apple producing area, South Tyrol, production is now expected to be around 1.01m tonnes during 2010/11, some 13 per cent lower than last season's 1.16m tonnes and 5 per cent down on the 1.07m tonnes forecast back in August.
Interpoma 2010, which took place on 4-6 November, attracted a total of 354 exhibitors from 18 countries including, for the first time, Japan and Israel.
Among the notable exhibitors at this year's biannual event was CIV, which used the occasion to unveil five new apple varieties.
A full report will be published in the January 2011 issue of Eurofruit Magazine.
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