Will frost decimate crops and endangered stone fruit in Spain

In recent days, nighttime temperatures have dropped below freezing in various fruit and vegetable production areas in Spain. For stone fruit, frost damage was reported in Badajoz, where temperatures reached -5°C in some areas, and to a lesser extent in Zaragoza. Although temperatures have dropped below 0 degrees in Murcia as well, no damage has been reported so far. "Temperatures dropped between -4 and -5°C in some early nectarine and peach production areas in Badajoz, causing damage to the flowers," says Miguel Ángel Gómez, managing director of the Extremadura Fruit Growers Association, AFRUEX. The most affected are the varieties that are usually harvested between May and June. "While it is too early to know the exact extent of frost damage, we do not expect it to be excessive in magnitude as flowering has been delayed." If flowering had taken place on normal dates, we would have been talking about a catastrophe, he said. In Murcia, temperatures did not drop below -2ºC for ...