Valencia's citrus fruit crop to fall by 25%

The orange production for the next campaign will amount, according to the first estimates, around 1,425,210 tons (-25% than last year). In particular, the Navel varieties will undergo a relevant reduction due to the drop by 31.77% of the Navelinas; for the Blancas varieties, the bad results will be due to the lost importance of the Salustiana variety and the reduced crop of Valencia Late (-30.3%).
For mandarins, the estimated production will be of 1,628,507 tons, which means a crop reduction by 20.6%. The largest drops will be for the Satsumas varieties (-47.13%) and hybrid varieties: Ortanique (32.09%), Fortune (18.87%) and Clemenvilla (14.2%).
The main mandarin variety - the Clemenules - will diminish by 15.25%.
Such crop reduction “could favour the beginning of the campaign, since there will be 300,000t of oranges and mandarins less than the last campaign and there is no reason why the farmer shouldn’t get good prices”, the councilor Martina Hernández explained.
Lemons, produced mainly in Alicante, are among citrus fruits those registering the worse production decrease: -50%, mainly due to the Verna variety which was affected by serious flowering problem, also because a large part of the previous season’s production was not harvested.
Grapefruit production will amount this year 4,761 tons, compared to 7,273 last year.