This year’s sour cherry harvest is much weaker than usual

The spring frost caused significant damage to the domestic sour cherry harvest, this year’s harvested quantity is far below the 60-70 thousand tons that can be produced in good years, but the harvest was much weaker than last year’s harvest, which was also very low. Although the exact volume of the harvested sour cherry crop is not yet known, the Hungarian Fruit and Vegetable Association (FruitVeB) estimates that the harvest will be closer to 30,000 tonnes than to 40,000 tonnes.

The largest losses were recorded in early varieties, with significant volumes coming from ‘cluster sour cherries’, which shortened the domestic processing season. However, spring frosts not only decimated the domestic sour cherry crop, but also caused drastic crop losses in major European sour cherry producing countries. This led to a strong over-demand for the fruit on both the domestic and international sour cherry markets. Demand was further increased by the fact that stocks of processed sour cherry products (cherry preserves, frozen sour cherries, sour cherry concentrate) were low both at home and abroad, partly due to the poor Hungarian and Polish harvests last year. Since the sour cherry harvest was also weak in other European countries, in addition to Poland and Germany, which are our main export markets, there has been a greater interest in Hungarian sour cherries from other markets. In the case of preserved sour cherries, Hungary is the dominant European producer, while in the case of frozen sour cherries and sour cherry concentrate, Poland, Serbia and Turkey are the dominant producers. A significant part of domestic sour cherries is exported: 25% of exports are fresh (raw) sour cherries as raw material, 70% are preserved, and 5% are frozen.