Professor at the Faculty of Agriculture in Novi Sad, Zoran Keserovic, said that the damage caused by the frost to the fruit will be 40 to 50 million euros.
He said apricot frosted 95 percent due to temperatures up to minus six degrees between March 22 and 23. These fruits are currently the largest in Vojvodina, in the Danube region in the area between Belgrade and Smederevo and in the area of Cacak.
Keserovic said that due to the frontal cold wave of apricots, it also collapsed in the orchards several hundred meters above sea level.
The low temperature has destroyed, he said, 60 to 70 percent of peaches and early plums, then significant cherries, while apples and cherries are more resistant and damage will be minimal.
He said that before the arrival of the cold wave, he warned the orchard owners to take some measures and that if they did not have frost baster machines that inject warm air into the orchard, they would at least smoke the orchard by burning straw bales.
Keserovic said protection was also possible by helicopter foliage, but it was expensive for small orchards. Late frosts, according to him, are possible in the first decade of April, and since 2012 they have not skipped any spring, N1 reports.
