Explosive start for the Chilean cherry season 2025/26. For the first time, the south of the country has outpaced the north in terms of earliness: the first cherries harvested come from the Colchagua Valley in the O’Higgins region, where Grupo Rocío began harvesting last Monday, October 13.
Making this achievement even more significant is the fact that these cherries will already arrive in China by Thursday, ready to kick off the export season.
The harvest took place on a one-hectare plot planted with the AG2 variety, developed by BQ Genetics. According to the CEO of Global AG, this variety even surpassed Brooks in earliness, which has historically been associated with the earliest harvests in the north of the country.
Favorable climatic conditions also played a role, allowing for an advance of at least six days compared to historical averages.
In terms of quality, the fruits reached remarkable sizes, with a predominance of 3J and even 4J, impressive results for such an early harvest.
Despite the symbolic overtaking, the north of Chile is not standing still. The very next day, Wednesday, October 16, several producers in the Coquimbo region also began harvesting their early cherries.
Among them, Sutil Organics Farms, in the Tabalí area, started harvesting the Brooks variety. The fruits will be transported by truck to the Garcés Fruit plant in San Francisco de Mostazal, where they will be processed and later shipped to the Chinese market.
Agrícola La Quiroga, in Cerrillos de Tamaya, also harvested the first fruits of the Nimba variety, from a commercial orchard without plastic covering, established in 2021.
The debut of Chilean cherries in 2025/26 highlights the growing competitiveness among regions and the push toward adopting new early-maturing varieties.
While Colchagua set a record by anticipating Ovalle, it remains to be seen how the season will evolve in the coming months and what strategies producers will adopt to conquer international markets, particularly the Chinese one, increasingly hungry for early fruit.
Text and image source: Redagricola
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