The second estimate of the 2016/2017 citrus harvest in the Region of Valencia, carried out by the Documentation and Statistics Service of the Department of Agriculture, Environment, Climate Change and Rural Development of Valencia, points to a volume totalling 3,885,539 tonnes; an increase of 21.5% compared to the previous year.
The first citrus production estimate, presented in September 2016, already predicted a greater volume than in the previous season, with a recovery of the production in relation to previous harvests and normal yields.
These figures, however, do not include the non-commercial volumes harvested so far, either because they do not reach a certain size or suffer damage from the storms of late 2016 and early 2017. The volume of non-marketed fruit is estimated at 640,000 tonnes (around 16% of the estimated harvest).
The first forecasts were made at the beginning of the season, after a normal flowering, although the lack of rainfall and high temperatures, together with the greater spacing between irrigations in some areas, caused the need to carry out several thinnings to facilitate the growth of the fruit in the trees.
In this sense, the most important were carried out with satsumas, early clementines and navelinas, which led to a reduction of the initial harvest estimates in the Region of Valencia as a whole, but later visits to the fields have revealed that the occasional rainfall of last October actually led to improvements in the fruit's calibre and gave a boost to the harvest forecasts of mid- and late season varieties.
In this sense, this second citrus harvest estimate reveals increases in relation to the first estimate for all hybrids (with the exception of the clemenvilla), the mid-season clementines (except for the clemenules and hernandins), as well as for Late and Valencia Late oranges.
Source: agronewscastillayleon.com
