Spain lemon association Ailimpo has called on its members to abandon the collection of Fino lemons and focus instead on marketing the Verna variety this season as a result of the substandard quality of the former crop.
The organisation said growers should switch from Fino to Verna from 1 May because this season’s Fino crop, which has still to be collected, had “failed to reach the level of quality needed to market it as a fresh product,” Ailimpo president José Andrés López said in a statement.
Ailimpo forecasts that some 300,000 tonnes of lemons will be produced during this year’s Verna campaign, of which 15,000 tonnes are likely to be exported, with the remainder destined for the Spanish domestic market and processors.
The association said that the Verna campaign would offer lemons at their optimum stage of maturity, with an important quality difference compared with the Fino variety.
Mr López added that the availability of Verna this season would allow the sector to guarantee the supply of lemons to the market until the end of July.
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