The total harvest of the EU’s watermelons and muskmelons as well as nectarines, peaches and muskmelons were 8.6 million tonnes. This is an increase of 6.3 percent from the levels of 2021 (9.2 million tonnes). The decrease was due to the smaller produced the muskmelons (-9.5 percent in 2022) as well as watermelons (18.4 percent for 2022). Actually, the yield of nectarines and peaches increased (+5.6 percent in 2022) as did that of the strawberries was relatively stable.

Spain was Europe’s largest producer of summer related fruit

Spain is an important EU producer of summer fruit. The country produced more than 50% (45.4 percent) of Europe’s watermelon production and almost a third (32.0 percent) of its Muskmelons plus more than a quarter (27.3 percent) of its strawberries as well as nectarines and peaches (26.9 percentage) for 2022.

In the same way, Italy produced just over one-third (36.1 percent) of the European Union’s muskmelons and its nectarines and peaches (35.6 percent) in addition to one-quarter (25.6 percent) of watermelons.

In the case of some particular fruit varieties, the other EU members had the top production: Poland ranked second for the production of strawberries (16.7 percent of EU production total), Greece second for the production of peaches and nectarines (27.1 percent) and third in watermelon production (12.4 percent), France third for the production of muskmelon (18.8 percent) while Germany third in production of strawberries (11.1 percent of the EU output).

For more information: ec.europa.eu