A balanced harvest is expected this year on domestic plum orchards

In the past 4 years, an average of around 45,000 tons of plums were harvested on domestic plantations, and in 2020, the season ended with a particularly low plum yield (24,000 tons). On the other hand, in 2022, the amount of all crops exceeded 60,000 tons. The last few years have apparently not been favorable to plums – spring frosts, the coldness of flowers, the absence of bees, and poor fertility cause increasingly large fluctuations in yields, so both the harvest and the market have become unpredictable.

According to the joint overview of the National Chamber of Agriculture and the Hungarian Vegetable and Fruit Association (FruitVeB), this year’s harvest in our country is likely to be between 50,000 and 60,000 tons, so this year we can approach the harvest of better vintages. The exact estimation is made difficult by the fact that the crop is extremely heterogeneous both by growing area and by variety. The harvesting season, as with most of our fruit species, started about 2-2.5 weeks earlier. The biggest problem at the moment is drought and atmospheric drought, which inhibits the growth of plums; some sensitive varieties almost dry up on the tree. If the dry and hot weather continues, it may reduce the expected yield, even to a greater extent. The producers did not report any significant plant protection problems this year.