Hungary has witnessed the sharpest decline in apple production among the European Union countries this season, said the project "APK-Inform: Vegetables and Fruits" with reference to the updated data of the World Association of Producers of Apples and Pears (WAPA).
According to the latest reports of the Association, this season apple production in Hungary’s orchards fell by 43%. In the 2015/16 season the gross harvest of this fruit in the country amounted to only 522,000 tons and was the lowest for the past 5 years. The apple harvest was considerably lower than the initial forecast by WAPA, which predicted a gross apple yield of 633,000 tons.
Last season saw an unprecedented high apple yield in Hungary of a record 920,000 tons, thus exceeding the figures of the season-2013/14 by almost 1.6 times.
In the EU in all, the apple harvest of the current season was one of the best in the last decade, despite a slight decline in production.
In the 2015/16 season in the EU 11.858 million tons of apples were collected, which is 6% less than in the previous season, but is higher than the average for the the last 5 years. The 2014/15 season set the record in the last decade for the harvest, when 12.56 million tons were collected from European orchards.
