According to Eurostat, in Cyprus, 3286 hectares of land is planted with fruit trees of which 377 hectares (ha) contains apples, 1.109 ha of oranges, 299 ha peaches, 933 ha mandarins, 71 ha pears, 186 ha apricots and 312 ha of lemons.

A five year data collection project revealed almost 1.3 million hectares of land in the EU was covered with fruit trees in 2017. One third of the area in the EU is taken up with apple orchards and another one fifth with orange groves.

Of the remainder, peaches, small citrus fruit trees producing satsumas and clementines, pears apricots covered and lemon groves made up the remainder.

In the EU, the area planted with fruit trees accounted for around 1 per cent of the utilised agricultural areas.

Two-thirds of the EU’s fruit plantations were concentrated in Spain, Italy and Poland. Spain was the leading EU Member State in terms of the production area of fruit in 2017, followed by Italy and Poland.

Compared with 2012, the area under fruit trees in the EU slightly increased (+0.4 per cent). There were expansions of fruit plantations in Poland, Greece, Romania and Portugal.

These offset declines elsewhere, notably in Spain, Italy, Czechia and Croatia.