On the eve of the harvesting campaign, members of the Association of Nut Growers of Moldova ANRM assessed the yield of orchard-type nut plantations and the quality of nuts as “average and above average”.
According to Oleg Tirsine, ANRM chairman, this year mass harvesting of early varieties of walnuts, including the Moldovan-Ukrainian variety “Peschanski”, will start on September 18-20, which is close to the statistical average. Last year, due to the extreme summer heat, when for several weeks the daily temperature was close to 40 degrees Celsius, the harvest started a week earlier.
Another important difference is that the precipitation that fell in most Moldovan regions last week intensified the process of cracking the green skin of walnut fruits, which is an indicator of their technical maturity, facilitates post-harvest processes and, ultimately, improves product quality. Last year, due to the lack of rainfall in September, the green peel of the fruit shriveled while the crop was still on the trees.
“This year the quality of walnuts, first of all – the caliber and fullness of the fruit – depends very much on the presence or absence of irrigation, as well as the feeding pattern of the plants,” says Oleg Tirsine. – In my garden, I gave twice irrigation by fine irrigation, a total of about 600 liters of water per tree, as well as actively applied leaf fertilizers. As a result, the difference in fruit quality compared to what the orchards without irrigation and with poor nutrition were able to produce under this year’s weather conditions is very noticeable.”
The issue of starting purchase prices for walnuts for export before the start of the mass harvesting campaign has not been discussed yet. However, traders are optimistic, trying to initiate a dialog on coordinated purchase of walnuts for the sake of exporting large batches of goods of homogeneous quality. In this regard, they do not exclude that from the start of the new season “demand prices will be slightly higher than last year”.
Last year, the “working” level of wholesale prices for most of the season was 25-30 lei/kg for varietal walnuts in hard shell, 100-120 lei/kg for walnut kernels (light halves).
According to Oleg Tirsine, this season the price level on the European market will largely depend on the position of the European Union regarding the supply of walnuts from China. Currently, there are already offers to supply early Chinese walnuts of “185” variety to Europe at the price of $2.30-2.40/kg (fruits in shell). This is quite a high price for a product from China. Walnuts from Moldova are in a different price category and a different “time window” of supply. However, the fact that European traders perceive working with Chinese walnuts – both kernels and fruits in shell – as a natural “variant of the norm” is a cause for concern. And European consumers already perceive Chinese walnuts as being of good quality.
