KEY POINTS:
It's fingers crossed for Central Otago cherry growers that they don't get much more rain over the next fortnight.
Rain throughout Christmas night and Boxing Day morning has caused some damage to early cherry crops, but much of the fruit is still to mature.
In Cromwell, Duncan Mathers at Sarita Orchard said there had been a lot of rain, but damage was variable, depending on variety
"Some varieties are quite badly affected and other varieties have hardly been affected," he said today.
"It was really yesterday's rain that did the damage. We're certainly optimistic, but we'd definitely like the rain to stop."
Harvesting was in full swing with pickers and packers hard at work
"We've survived pretty well really," Mr Mathers said.
"We've got one variety called stella and probably 50 per cent of it is damaged, but we have another variety called lapins and it, to date, is virtually unaffected."
At Earnscleugh Kevin Paulin, manager of the Alpine Packhouse, said they had had some damage, but most of their cherries would not be ready for another 10 days to two weeks, so they hadn't been too badly affected.
"We have got some damage, but I've seen things a lot worse," Mr Paulin said.
"We've only had one rain event which has done some damage, overnight Christmas night Boxing Day morning we had 10mm of rain and it was very warm. A lot of the cherries that are near harvesting and anything that was quite mature suffered a bit of damage but overall we're not too concerned."
He said stella was the variety that seemed to have been affected the worst.
"Lapins and sweethearts, the main export varieties, which we won't be harvesting for another couple of weeks, look okay," Mr Paulin said.
In Alexandra Nigel Hinton said his orchard had rain covers so had not greatly been affected.
He had heard varying reports of damage, but they were all second hand, so he was not sure of the extent.
"All the earlier varieties will have had some damage, the ones that are nearly mature," he said.
"Hopefully with the later ones, the likes of lapins, staccato and sweethearts, there'll be some damage, but minimal damage I would imagine.
"But if we get a lot more rain this week, or steady sort of rain there could be some severe damage.
"It's not serious serious, but with cherry growing you're still only one major rain away from a total disaster, so fingers crossed," Mr Hinton said.
In 2002 Central Otago orchardists reported the export cherry season had turned into disaster.
Summer rainfall up to three times the norm ruined millions of dollars worth of fruit.
In 2004 and 2005 rain also wreaked havoc on the cherry crops.
- NZPA
