The National Chamber of Agriculture (NAK), the Hungarian Fruit and Vegetable Producers’ Alliance (FruitVeB) and the Hungarian Melon Farmers Association (MDE) have told the press that farmers are expecting a quality harvest, and that there has been progress made in the areas of production technologies and breed variety.
In the past years, Hungarian watermelon cultivation has changed. After decades, years of development saw the production area cut in half but production volume remain at the same levels due to the introduction of novel farming technologies. Hungarian watermelon farmers however, have been on the back foot in foreign markets as they have continuously lost position to farmers from Mediterranean countries, primarily, Greece, Italy and Spain.
Agroberichtenbuitenland.nl reports that, due to this, domestic producers’ alliances have put effort into studying melon farming in these countries, which also led to less shrinking in the production area in the past few years.
As a part of this reform process, old and obsolete varieties have been replaced with grafted and hybrid varieties. Greenhouse production (in polytunnel) has also appeared in the Hungarian melon farming sector. Currently, 2 to 3% of the watermelon crops and 20% of cantaloupes are produced under polytunnel. Agrárszektor.hu concludes that production is now more efficient on Hungarian watermelon farms and the new varieties are also more disease resistant.
Source: agroberichtenbuitenland.nl