Unseasonably warm weather at the end of winter prompted early budding in Bulgarian orchards—only to be followed by two of the harshest frost waves in decades. The result: severe damage to the country’s stone fruit crops.
Beeld: © Association of Fruit Growers in Bulgaria, agri.bg
In 2025, up to 150,000 tonnes of fruit are at risk, with some industry experts warning that as much as 80% of producers have been affected, many facing total losses. As growers deal with the aftermath, the sector stands at a critical juncture, urgently calling for government aid and long-term solutions from science and technology.
“Tense anticipation, helplessness, despair – these are the emotions that have gripped many fruit growers in the country in recent days” – describes the situation Zhivka Grozdeva – fruit grower and member of the Board of Directors of the Association of Fruit Growers in Bulgaria (AOB), cited by agri.bg portal. “The situation is new for us, we have never been in such a situation. In my experience in agriculture (15 years), I have never seen blooming orchards covered in snow. In the area, temperatures reached minus 5 degrees and below”, she adds.
Volatile climate
With the changing and more volatile climate, late frost have turned into one of the biggest and most dangerous challenges for Bulgarian fruit growers in recent years. With stone fruit producers being endangered the most. Winters are getting milder with spring temperatures occurring quite early, giving a “go” signal for orchards. In the same time, Bulgaria is still part of the moderate climate zone and exposed for influx of late cold fronts from the North/Northeast during the first spring weeks. The smooth transition between the two seasons has become rather an exception than a rule. Due to а diverse terrain and climate variations, late frosts usually affect only certain parts or even specific pockets of the country, providing natural risk diversification of sorts for the total fruit production.
Worst-case scenario in 2025
But 2025 is different – i.e. exceptionally worse. At the end of February and beginning of March, minimum temperatures remained above zero and maximum temperatures hovered around 20 °C across most of the key production areas, resulting in orchards to exit dormancy and start blossoming early. Then, mid-March and beginning of April brought two major cold snaps with minimum temperatures falling around and below 0 °C. Sandanski – the south westernmost area of Bulgaria with Greek-like climate, saw frosting night temperatures between 7th and 9th of April with many other regions being in frost window (reaching -7 °C) for almost a week. Therefore, late frosts impacted severely almost indiscriminately the whole country.
Damages
Stone fruits, in particular, received the most significant damages – cherries, plums, apricots and peaches. According to industry sources, severely affected are almost 80% of the producers. Many of them will suffer from complete crop loss. Some of the apple and pear orchards were also under threat.
In response to the widespread worries and tensions in the fruit sector, the Minister of Agriculture and Food Georgi Tahov announced that areas with 100% frost losses will be provided with a state aid that amounts to 80% compensation of production costs, calculated according to a general technological standard. The payments will be made about a month after commissions perform field damage assessment. So far, there is no official estimation of the affected areas.
According to industry leaders, insurance coverage in most cases excludes frost events prior mid-April due to the extremely high risk of occurrence – even Bulgarian insurers consider frost events in that period a sure thing, with the only questions being how severe and widespread they would be.
And what’s at stake? In 2024, Bulgaria had 11 200 ha of cherries (incl. 1000 ha sour cherries) harvested (54 000 tonnes production), about 9500 ha of plums (61 000 tonnes), 3200 ha of apricots, 2300 ha of peaches.
Dutch role in Bulgarian climate adaptation
Financial aid and compensations could provide some basic relief to growers in order to bridge them to the next season, a long term approach is needed to maintain the resilience and profitability of their orchards, since volatile climate seems here to stay. While growers cannot directly affect climate, they can make a difference locally - science and technology are now providing them with tools, if not to eliminate, to substantially foresee and mitigate frost risks. Modern planting material development could help them with varieties with higher level of frost resistance or blossoming timing, adjusted for local climate characteristics and threats. Precise and smart weather stations could evaluate wide range of risk indicators, providing growers with live forecasts and frost alerts. These data and forecasts could be easily integrated with automated systems for micro climate management in the orchard – fans for air circulation or heating (for the night frosts) or sprinklers (for the prolonged cold periods). Last but not least, a modern and highly productive and effective orchard is typically able to generate, through its lifetime, profitability higher enough to smooth the effect of even one or two complete crop losses.
This is, namely, one of the goals of the Netherlands Fruit Basket Bulgaria PIB cluster. Two of the biggest Dutch fruit tree nurseries - Fleuren and Verbeek, join forces with technology suppliers FrostFans and VGB Watertechniek to provide Bulgarian growers with turnkey solutions to manage and mitigate frost risks. Facilitated by the Netherlands Agricultural Network, RVO and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Bulgaria, the business program aims to intensify technology and knowledge transfer between the Netherlands and Bulgaria and thus, to make Bulgarian fruit growers more resilient and to unlock their substantial growth potential.