2,500 tons of "Chriesi"

The Swiss Fruit Association expects a harvest of over 2,500 tons of cherries in "outstanding" quality this year. This is a quarter more than the average of the last five years.

 The Swiss "Chriesi" (cherry)  producers are rejoicing: The Schweizer Obstverband (Swiss Fruit Association) expects an "excellent cherry year", as it announced on Monday. Production is already in full swing, and the local population can look forward to over 2,500 tons of "qualitatively outstanding" cherries. This means that the harvest is 25% above the average of the past five years.

The success story of the Swiss "Chriesi" is continuing for the fruit association: the added value of the local cherry production has doubled in the last 20 years, and today amounts to around CHF 20 million– despite a heavily changed environment, as it adds. The demand for cherries for distillation, for example, has fallen from 10,000 tons to a third of this over the last 25 years. The market volume of table cherries, on the other hand, has increased to around 6,000 tons. According to the fruit association, the degree of self-sufficiency is around 50%.

The population can look forward to lots of Swiss "Chriesi" this year     Archive photo:      

Association calls for support
Increasing weather extremes are also affecting cherry production and, as in 2017 and 2021, are causing "significant crop failures". The reason at that time was the late frost. New invasive pest pathogens are also spreading due to increasing cross-border trade, while the producers are trying to use fewer pesticides at the same time.

Fruit growing is therefore calling for support from politics and science. "In order to continue the success story, we need massive investments in practicable and economical crop protection," says Bruno Eschmann from the association. "On our part, we are immediately implementing new findings and are investing significantly in even more sustainable cultivation."