2023-05-05 07:39:19
“A short week late”, this is what Étienne Arnaudiès of the La Melba cooperative, in Céret (Pyrénées-Orientales) acknowledges. It is indeed around Céret that the first French cherries emerge each year and the year seems quite promising. “We are a little late, but the heat of the first days of May is making us move quickly, we will probably have finished the first variety, the burlats, by mid-May,” he adds.
If the fruits are numerous on the trees, the drought somewhat limits the caliber (size) of the cherries. But the dry weather has an advantage. It makes it possible to erase two years complicated by the frost and the rain which had come to spoil the harvests. And above all, for the time being, he keeps in check Drosophila Suzukii, a fly that causes significant damage in orchards by laying eggs in still green fruit, unlike other species that like very ripe fruit. A phenomenon that makes their marketing difficult. “For the moment it is quite discreet”, confirms Jean-Pierre Bails, president of the cooperative, who is delighted, the producers having hardly any means to fight against the proliferation when it occurs.
The first few kilos harvested on May 4 should give way to larger volumes from the start of the second week of the month. The cooperative thought it could send, as is the tradition, a package of cherries to the Élysée on May 8 or 9. La Melba has a potential of a hundred tons of cherries each season.
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