Fruit growers in canton Valais in southern Switzerland are anxiously watching the weather as frost threatens the region’s apricot trees. +Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox "The first torches were lit around 11pm," Jean-Noël Devènes, a fruit grower in Baar, near Nendaz, told the Keystone-SDA news agency. He described a "nasty and biting" cold coming up from the valleys, which proved "difficult" to cope with as "air currents cancelled out the heat". Between 400 and 450 candles per hectare were lit, with the fruit grower working all night on two of his six hectares of apricot orchards. "We focussed on the most critical areas, where the blossom is already over and the fruit is more sensitive to the cold," he explained. In these areas, the temperature can be brought down to zero to 1 degrees Celsius, compared to -4 C where no candles were present. "We'll see tomorrow (Sunday) whether it was worth it," said Devènes. Early flowering causes problems According to ...
