Recent Techniques and Developments on Cherry Growing in Turkey

The wild cherries are mostly seen in the North Anatolian and the Taurus mountains of Turkey. Cherry cultivation is concentrated on the slopes of 1000–1500 m where wild cherries are grown, also at the river valleys or in Izmir and Manisa provinces at the western parts of the country over 100 m elevation with very high quality. Turkey is the leading country in the world on cherry production. Cherry production in Turkey has been performed mostly with ‘0900 Ziraat’ cherry cultivar, which was known as Turkish cherry in Europe. As a result of the studies carried out for fruit cracking and self fertility, Regina, Kordia, Sweet Heart and Lapins cherry cultivars were selected as alternative cherry cultivars to ‘0900 Ziraat’. In 1997, “Turkish National Cherry Working Group” was founded and organized 20 working group meetings until today to solve all the problems of cherries. In these meetings, all the research results were shared and discussed among cherry scientists. Recently, studies on prolonging the cherry season with early and late cherry cultivars to increase the amount of cherry exportation was achieved. For this aim, Sweet Heart at high elevations, Royal Lynn® and Royal Tioga® at subtropical climatic conditions were found to be suitable