Sales of cherry plants to Chilean producers are soaring due to attractive international prices in some key markets, according to nursery company Viveros Los Olmos. 

Speaking at the recent Produce Marketing Association (PMA) Fruittrade Latin America event, sales representative Rodrigo Palacio told www.freshfruitportal.com attractive prices in China were driving the growth.

"Cherry plants are a really strong part of our business at the moment. It's a fruit that's being sold in large volumes to China, and the Chinese are paying very well," Palacio said.

"Chinese New year changes every year between January and February, and as we harvest here around December it means we get there right on time."

Palacio said the U.S. was also paying good prices for the summer fruit, and so Chilean exports had a selection of strong markets.

As well as cherries, Viveros Los Olmos also sells plants for apples, pears, kiwifruit and table grapes to growers, most of whom are based in Chile.

Palacio said apple plant sales were growing too, but there have been som big shifts in the country's production sector recently.

"It's a market that is mainly made up of large growers who are producing big volumes, and the smallest ones are disappearing," he said.

"Now we only really sell our plants to big companies."

He added there was a huge amount of work going on developing new apple varieties, but producers needed to be careful and only grow the ones suited to their particular region.

While sales for kiwifruit plants are still growing, Palacio said interest had dropped significantly following the outbreak of the vine disease Psa.

Oddly enough, the biggest demand was still for the gold kiwifruit varieties despite them generally being more susceptible to Psa.

In terms of cherry varieties, Palacio said there had been no changes of note with regards to demand.

"People are still choosing the more typical and popular varieties - Regina, Kordia, Lapin et cetera. So we're not really seeing new varieties becoming popular," he said.

Viveros currently sells around 60,000 cherry plants annually, which is the equivalent to around 60 hectares of production land.

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