Unseasonably heavy and persistent rainfall in Honduras is seriously delaying melon plantings.

“Because of all the rain, we have not even been able to prepare the ground for planting,” said Yury Reyes, European commercial representative at grower-exporter Agrolibano. “We think plantings are about two weeks behind.”

Land in the main melon growing areas in southern Honduras is usually prepared during the one dry month in the middle of the rainy season between mid-July and mid-August, which is known locally as the canícula. “The problem this year is that we did not have the canícula,” said Reyes, who believes the situation is unlikely to cause huge disruption to the UK market.

“We try and enter the rest of the EU market in the first week in January every year, but do not arrive in the UK until the third week of January. If climatic conditions from now on are good, arrivals to the UK should only be delayed by about a week,” he added.

An estimated 4,200 hectares have been affected by the continuous rainfall mainly in the southerly departments of Choluteca and Valle and some growers with 30 years’ experience in the business have reported it is the heaviest rainfall they have seen.

Melons are Honduras’s third most important export crop after coffee and bananas, and have been enjoying an increasingly important role on the UK market in the window between Brazilian and Spanish supplies between January and April.

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