Chile's Central Valley

How apples came

The apple reached Chile with the Spanish. In 1579 the citizens of Santiago drew up a record of their services for the Crown, listing among the trees they had brought apples and camuesas, an old Spanish kind of apple⁶. By the early seventeenth century fruit from the Central Valley went to Peru by sea, and in 1646 the Chilean Jesuit Ovalle recalled apple groves “like forests” (translated), with so much fallen fruit that the irrigation channels choked and the water ran into the streets⁶.

Colonial inventories show how far the apple spread. Historians searching notarial and court records of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries counted 17,837 apple trees in Chile and the Argentine Cuyo. After Santiago, with 10,555, San Fernando, now a commune of O’Higgins, had the most, 2,447; at Parral and Cauquenes, now in the Maule, apples, pears and quinces made up more than half of all fruit trees listed^8,1,2. The records name seven kinds of apple, among them sweet and sour sorts, the camueso, the pero and a keeping apple⁷.

The census of 1936 counted 461,791 apple trees in Chile, second only to the peach, but only 3,851 in the province of Curicó, whose commune now grows more red apples than any other in the Maule^9,1. The apple was already the leading fresh-fruit export, rising from 3,386 tonnes in 1929 to 6,226 tonnes in 1935⁹; in 1928 a cargo of 33,000 boxes had opened the German market at Hamburg¹⁰.

A growers’ co-operative founded at Curicó in 1955 sold first at home and, from 1965, abroad, and in 1967 the first dwarfing apple rootstocks, the M9 series, reached the University of Chile¹⁰. The boom came in the 1980s, when apples were planted around Rancagua and Curicó and table grapes in the northern deserts¹⁰; at its start apples and table grapes made up more than 80% of the volume of fresh fruit Chile exported⁵.

How they’re grown

Curicó’s airfield weather station, open since 1917, stands at 229 m¹³. Water is the constraint: rainfall there has ranged from 1,470.2 mm in 1972 to 133.8 mm in 2020¹⁴, and the O’Higgins cadastre of 2024 speaks of a long drought across much of the country². In 2024 drip lines watered 6,092 ha of the Maule’s red apples and micro-sprinklers 4,814 ha, against 2,010 ha on furrows; in O’Higgins furrows still watered 1,397 of 3,151 ha^1,2.

Dwarfing rootstocks became common in the late 1990s, thirty years after they arrived, and the Solaxe training system came from France in 1995¹⁰. In 2024 the Maule’s red-apple orchards averaged 1,649 trees and 47.6 t a hectare¹. The Universidad de Talca’s Centro de Pomáceas was founded in 1995 with growers, nurseries and exporters. It works mostly on apples because more than half of Chile’s crop came from the Maule, and its director counted it a leader on sun damage, fruit nutrition and storage; in 2005 its 27 member companies grew about 30% of Chile’s apples¹¹.

Heat is the other problem. In 2014/15 parts of the Maule had up to 60% fewer hours below 10 °C before harvest than usual, and parts of O’Higgins had none of the cool nights red apples need to colour. Growers have turned to well-coloured strains, netting or kaolin sprays against sunburn, and new orchards higher in the Maule’s Andean foothills, while the Centro de Pomáceas and a variety-management company breed low-chill apples for both regions¹².

The orchards are shrinking. Between the cadastres of 2022 and 2024 the Maule lost 14.1% of its red-apple area and 20.3% of its green, and its farms growing red apples fell from 534 to 468, while its cherries grew by 17.9% to 32,801 ha¹. O’Higgins lost 28.4% of its red apples between 2021 and 2024². USDA blames poor returns, with cherries and walnuts taking the land³.

What’s picked

In 2024 the Maule had 13,275 ha of red apples and 2,110 ha of green, and O’Higgins 3,151 ha and 1,743 ha^1,2: on USDA’s reading of the same surveys, 61.6% and 19.6% of Chile’s 24,994 ha³. Curicó had the most red apples, 2,096 ha; in O’Higgins, Chimbarongo led with 1,075 ha^1,2.

Maule growers reported 520,565 t of red apples and 78,050 t of green in 2024; 71.38% of the red crop was exported, 14.61% sold at home and 14.00% processed¹. For the whole country USDA estimates 962,000 t in 2024/25 and forecasts 940,000 t for 2025/26³.

The Maule’s largest red plantings in 2024 were two strains of Gala (1,632 and 1,309 ha), one of Fuji (1,220 ha) and a sport of Cripps Pink (1,214 ha)^1,4. Nationally, in 2015/16, 81% of the apple area was red and 19% green, the green almost all Granny Smith; Gala held 19.3% of the red-apple area and Cripps Pink 10.3%⁴.

USDA’s national calendar puts Gala in February and March, Fuji in March and April and Cripps Pink in April and May⁴; a Centro de Pomáceas specialist describes picking from the end of January to the first half of May, with a gap in early March that Red Delicious once filled¹². The Maule’s packers had 363 controlled-atmosphere chambers in 2024, with a capacity of 721,279 m³¹. Chile exported 553,996 t of fresh apples in 2023/24, a fifth of them to Brazil³.

On the table

USDA expects Chileans to use about 390,000 t of apples, fresh and processed, in 2025/26, 41.9% of commercial production³; in 2013 they ate 14 kg a head⁴. Processors take 15–20% of the crop, mostly small or lower-grade fruit, for juice concentrate, purée and dried apple³. In colonial times, before refrigeration reached the region in the 1920s, apples were eaten mostly fresh but also dried and made into sweets⁸, and cider and chicha made from them were prized, Chiloé’s islanders and Indigenous people being known for both⁶.

In April 2016 the neighbours of El Zinc, at Cordillerilla near Los Niches outside Curicó, revived a once-traditional apple festival, with contests for the biggest apple and the greatest apple-eater and a queen chosen from candidates representing two local farms¹⁵.

In Mapudungun, the Mapuche language, an apple is manshana, borrowed from the Spanish manzana; Augusta’s dictionary of 1916 also gives manshanapülku, apple chicha¹⁶.

Notes

• In 1936 Chile had about three peach trees for every apple tree, yet its apple exports were more than ten times its peach exports⁹.
• Of the 1,032 apple, pear and quince trees whose variety colonial records name, 254 were apples and 764 pears⁷.
• Chile’s apple area fell from 36,059 ha in 2015/16 to 24,994 ha in 2024/25^4,3.

Where the sources disagree

• Harvest months. No official calendar for the two regions was found. USDA’s national calendar runs from February to May⁴; January is included on the word of a Centro de Pomáceas specialist¹².
• The 1936 census. The census tables reproduced by Lacoste and Rendón give 461,791 apple trees⁹; a table in a later chapter of the same book gives only 61,229 pome-fruit plants for 1936¹⁰. The census tables are used here.
• When Curicó took up the apple. No source read dates it: the 1936 census found few apple trees in the province⁹, and the 1980s boom planted them around Rancagua and Curicó¹⁰.
• Strains and shares. The cadastre lists Gala, Fuji and the Cripps Pink sport under strain names, given here under the cultivar. Its national shares (64.05% of red and 49.44% of green apples) differ from USDA’s because it combines surveys of different years^1,3; “about four-fifths” in the summary adds USDA’s two shares.