There was a strong frost in the Turkish province Malatya, in the south east of the country, in the last week of March. As the temperatures have been above the average since January and it has been drier at the same time, the flowers were blooming considerably earlier than in a regular year, which made them more sensitive to frost than usual. This was reported by the German Agrarmarkt Informations-Gesellschaft (AMI) in its website.
Turkey is the largest producer of apricots globally and produced around 795,000 tonnes of apricots in 2012. 95% of this was from the region Malatya. Part of the Turkish apricots are dried after the harvest. In recent years between 65 and 80 percent of dried apricots produced world wide were from the region Malatya.