Articles
CHERRY GROWING IN AUSTRALIA – A BRIEF OVERVIEW
In recent years there has been significant new plantings including many in non-traditional areas in NSW, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania, Queensland and Western Australia.
Production over recent years has been 5,000 – 8,000 tonnes per annum, by 500 cherrygrowers most with small to medium tonnage, to orchards with over 400 tonnes.
Most of the annual variation has occurred due to drought or wet conditions at blossom or harvest.
Production could double within the next five years as new plantings start producing.
With a population of 19,000,000 most of the cherries are sold within Australia; exports vary from 3 – 15 %. Annually 5–8 % of the crop is processed; mostly ‘Napoleon’, the remainder various dark varieties.
In recent years there has been strong marketplace pressure for growers to replace old varieties such as ‘Burgsdorf’, ‘Chapman’, ‘Early Rivers’, ‘Early Lyons’, ‘Eagle Seedling’, with new more marketable varieties, e.g. ‘Empress’, ‘Early Burlat’, ‘Merchant’, ‘Vista’, ‘Kristin’, ‘Ulster’, ‘Sylvia’, ‘Vic’, ‘Sunburst’, ‘Nordwunder’, ‘Lapins’ and ‘Sweetheart’. These, together with ‘Supreme’, ‘Lewis’, ‘Moss Early’, ‘Ron’s Seedling’, ‘Summit’, ‘Van’, ‘Stella’, ‘Bing’, ‘Lambert’, ‘Williams Favourite’ and ‘Black Douglas’ will be the majority of production.
Australia has in recent years imported many new selections of cherries from around the world to be evaluated for suitability to our varied growing conditions.
Also a National Cherry Breeding programme is attempting to produce superior varieties.
Cherry harvest for most growers is six to eight weeks with from five to twenty varieties harvested.
Cherries are hand sorted on belt graders.
Larger growers size grade fruit into four sizes on machines that incorporate bin tipping, chlorinated water dumping, hydrocooling and multiple sorting belts with production of up to 4 tonnes per hour.