W18: Plum & Prune Update

In W18 in the plum and prune landscape, Chile seeks to promote its Sweet Pekeetah Plum, a variety of Japanese plums, with crispy, juicy, very sweet pulp characteristics, and with an excellent post-harvest shelf life that allows it to reach distant markets. The fruit has already been successfully shipped to markets such as China, the US, and Brazil. Now, the challenge is to make it known to the markets and consumers. Sweet Pekeetah ranks as the first commercial product of the program and is commercially developed in Chile by a group of 10 fresh fruit exporters totaling 110 ha planted in the Metropolitan, O'Higgins, and Maule regions.

At the beginning of summer 2022, the European Commission and the European Parliament agreed to expand the Euro-2022 quotas for preferential supplies of Moldovan plums from 15 to 40K MT. However, due to the decrease in the yield of many fruit crops as a result of the severe atmospheric drought in summer 2022, even on irrigated plantations of perennial crops, preferential quotas were not fully selected for any of the Moldovan commodity items such as tomatoes, garlic, grapes, apples, cherries, plums, and grape juice. The EC proposed on May 4th to extend the current suspension of import duties on Moldovan exports to the EU for another year and extend this suspension to all remaining tariffs and tariff quotas for Moldovan imports. This is a clear signal of the EU's full support for the Moldovan economy and helps to further alleviate the difficult situation faced by Moldovan growers and exporters due to Russia's military aggression against Ukraine.

At the end of April and the beginning of May, the Vietnamese cherry plum online market was flooded with domestic products possessing characteristics similar to imported fruit. The fruit is hard, crunchy, and feels 8 parts sweet and only 2 parts sour, being soft, ripe and sweet. The cherry plum prices were considered very cheap, with prices ranging from USD 0.64-0.94/kg depending on the type. Lastly, in Russia, Crimean farmers expect to plant more than 900 ha of new perennial fruit trees such as peaches, apple trees, plums, and pears in 2023. Since 2014, the rate of laying young orchards increased by more than 6 times, attributed to horticultural support that saw finances rise from USD 0.80M to USD 12.08.