Spanish stonefruit and berry grower-exporter Royal has harvested peaches in March for the first time in its 34-year history.
The Seville-based supplier, whose stonefruit production is based in Andalusia, has benefitted from favourable conditions so far this season, with picking getting under way on 25 March, around two weeks earlier than the normal start date of 5-10 April.
Besides the weather, director of strategy Tanguy Debiesse put the early harvest down to technical advances in production and the success of Royale’s in-house breeding programme.
“Our yellow peaches are exciting because they come very early, much earlier than anything else you can find on the market,” he said. “They’re quite big in size and although the harvest began in March, they started with a Brix of 10.7 – that’s very high for the time of year.”
