SOURCE: Clara Hernanz Lizarraga and Ainhoa Goyeneche, Bloomberg When Manuel Lavao planted some of Europe’s very first avocado orchards in 1978 in La Axarquía, a sun-soaked stretch of southern Spain, he helped usher in decades of growth for the continent’s exotic fruit sector. Almost a half-century later, he’s pulling upContinue Reading
SOURCE: Levante TRANSLATION: Freshplaza In many cases, the avocado is grown on land that was previously devoted to the production of oranges and clementines. Currently, the Valencian Community has 2,800 hectares of avocado, a crop that has rapidly expanded throughout the community and, according to Celestino Recatala, the vice presidentContinue Reading
Dragon fruit (Hylocereus undatus) is a high-value fruit crop, introduced about a decade ago in the mainland of Spain. In 2021, suspicious chlorotic spots were observed for the first time on young cladodes in a commercial dragon fruit orchard in the province of Seville.Continue Reading
SOURCE: AP News The Spanish Navy has started helping farmers on the volcanic island of La Palma to reach their lava-surrounded banana plantations by sea, Spain’s Defense Ministry said on Thursday. A scale 5 earthquake overnight offered a reminder that the eruption on the island of 85,000 is continuing strongContinue Reading
SOURCE: Marco Trujillo and Nacho Doce, Reuters In more than 50 years growing bananas on the Spanish island of La Palma, Antonio Brito Alvarez has never seen anything like the devastation wrought by the Cumbre Vieja volcano, which has been spewing out molten rock and ash since Sunday. “All this is burnt,Continue Reading
SOURCE: Nacho Sanchez, El Pais TRANSLATION: Freshplaza Avocado cultivation in Malaga has grown exponentially in recent decades. According to data from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Food, the province has gone from having 50 avocado trees in 1943 to 1.5 million avocado trees in almost 7,000 hectares nowadays. ThisContinue Reading
SOURCE: Diario Sur TRANSLATION: Freshplaza The Agrarian Transformation Society (SAT) Trops and Vodafone have launched a pilot project to provide mango harvesting machines with artificial intelligence so they can decide in real-time if the fruit is ready to be harvested based on the fruit’s size, appearance, and point of maturity.Continue Reading
A group of Spanish and Portuguese pitaya producers have set up the Andalusian Cooperative Society (SAC) ‘Pitaya de Andalucía’, through which they intend to promote the cultivation of this tropical fruit in the south of the Iberian Peninsula.Continue Reading
SOURCE: Noticias de Almeria TRANSLATION: Freshplaza Scientists from the AGR-200 Research Group of the University of Almería, working in partnership with the nursery Vitalplant, have carried out a project on the “Influence of early sexing and papaya plant size on the production and quality of fruits grown in greenhouses inContinue Reading
The carambola or star fruit is one of the tropical fruits that can only be grown in one place in continental Europe: Malaga. The Institute of Subtropical and Mediterranean Horticulture La Mayora has a collection of fifteen varieties of star fruits from different parts of the world, which it usesContinue Reading
The Region of Murcia produces about 1,100 tons of papayas per year in about 24 hectares, which are currently in production. Of this acreage, about 20 hectares belong to one firm, which sells one million kilos annually and plans to double that figure in 2019, since it has fast growingContinue Reading
Last season the Lusar Tropical company, a company from Huelva that is dedicated to the plantation of tropical fruits, managed to produce more than 300,000 kilos of a native variety of mango that has been adapted to the climate of the area. According to the company, they expect production willContinue Reading