Chile’s Office of Agriculture Studies and Policy (ODEPA) has announced the country's fresh fruit exports grew 19.1% in the first three months of 2011 compared to the same period in 2010.

The highest growth was for apples with 59.7% growth to 99,187 metric tons (MT), followed by cherries with growth of 58.6% to 36,415MT.

Growth rates were also high for blueberries (38.4%), plums (30.8%), pears (24.5%), nectarines (17.6%), grapes (14.6%) and peaches (9.3%).

Lemon exports fell dramatically by 39.4% but this was largely due to seasonal issues, while avocado exports fell 44.7% due to high domestic consumption.

Kiwifruit registered a slight rise of 3.7%, but the season has only recently started and the first quarter represents a very small proportion of total exports.

With a combined export volume of 543,943MT, apples and grapes represented 62.8% of total fresh fruit exports for the quarter.

Total nut exports fell slightly by 2.7% during the quarter to 1,374MT, while industrialized fruit exports grew 13.4% with the sharpest rises registered for canned apricots, peaches and pears, frozen blackberries, olive oil and apple juice.

www.freshfruitportal.com