Italian Farmers Protect Against Frost with Five Methods

On the night of Wednesday, March 19, 2025, the first of two planned frost rounds occurred in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy. Fruit producers employed various protection methods, such as sprinkling, mobile heating, burners, wind machines, smoking, and their combinations. The final result will only be visible in a few days.

This is reported by AgroReview

One of the most common methods is anti-frost sprinkling. For instance, gardener Daniele Golinucci in Forli protected the yellow kiwi G3 plant using sprinklers that were activated in the early evening.

Another gardener decided to install a burner on a tractor trailer. The heat it emits spreads throughout the orchard, and to raise the temperature by a few degrees, he needed to drive around the orchard area throughout the night.

In Villanova di Ravenna, farmer Davide Vernocchi, who is also the president of Apoconerpo, spent the night with assistants loading and tending to pellet burners.

“We set up almost 400 of them, and at the same time, I started the irrigation system. We’ll see if this will be enough, as in other years, to protect the stone fruit harvest. It’s tough; we have to work all night,” said Vernocchi.

The Piolanti brothers from Forli used the anti-frost wind machine from Officine Mingozzi for the first time. For the rest of the season, this machine serves for weeding, but in the last few nights, it was used to raise the temperature in the orchard thanks to the open fire created between the rows of plants.

On Antonio Casadei’s farm in the province of Ravenna, they combine subsurface irrigation with burning hay. This method has already saved crops in challenging years such as 2020, 2021, and 2023.

Read also: Frost in Cyprus Destroyed the Potato Harvest.