THE picture could hardly be prettier. It’s cherry blossom time, and the stone fruit orchards of Australia are thick with the smell of flowers and the buzz of insects drifting in the warm spring air.

But the picturesque scenes belie a sorry story. The good autumn rains fell just as the trees went into their dormant winter state. It helped de-stress the trees and set them up for spring time. As a result, branches are dripping with an abundance of flowers.

But because the trees cannot bear a heavy fruit load during dry conditions, growers now have to decide whether to chemically strip most of the flowers off thetrees, or leave them as they are and hope like hell it rains.

The stone fruit industry, normally worth more than $300million at the farm gate, fears its earnings will be down by as much as 40 per cent.

More than 80 per cent of the national production of apricots, cherries, peaches, plums and nectarines occurs in the Murray- Darling Basin, where irrigation allocations have been cut sharply.

Ian McAlister, chair of the peak body Summerfruit Australia, said the situation was the worst in his lifetime.

“The main issue is to keep the permanent plantings alive, for the future,” he said.

“The full length of the Murray has the same problem. The country has never been in this position before.”

However, Colin Gray, executive director of the Australian Chamber of Fruit and Vegetable Industries, said there would not be huge fruit shortages for consumers or sharp jumps in prices, “assuming it will rain”.

“We are pretty confident that if you want cherries on your table at Christmas you will have them,” he said. “If we don’t get rain, it will be a different story.”

Peter Darley, a horticultural specialist on the NSW Farmers Association’s Drought Advisory Committee, said many serious decisions had to be made in the next few weeks — such as which blocks to save and which to leave to nature’s fickle hand.

“Reducing the flowers off the trees to reduce the fruit load is a gamble for growers. Come December, there could be a lot of rain. Who knows?” he said.

“It looks pretty but it isn’t. Once a tree is in flower it comes under a lot of stress. It needs water. With little water it is very difficult to go from flower to fruit.”

Ian Hay, national president of Cherry Growers of Australia, said the Young District of NSW, where he is based, had been eligible for “exceptional circumstances” drought funding for the past five years. Farmers, to obtain that classification, had to demonstrate that at least 25 per cent of their trees had died.

Mr Hay said the remaining trees were being kept alive by ground water but it was not enough for a successful crop. Production had fallen 40 per cent from thestart of the decade.

“Without natural rainfall we find it very difficult to achieve a large size of fruit, which is what the market demands,” he said. “If we could get consumers to accept smaller fruit, which are full of flavour but just not as large, it would help.”

South Australia Farmers Federation chief executive Carol Vincent said most of the stone fruit grown in the state was under irrigation, but there was almost no water available.

“A lot are having real difficulties keeping their orchards alive,” she said.

“We are not just talking about loss of income for the individuals; it is for their communities and for South Australia as a whole.”

Drought policy adviser for Agforce in Queensland, Rod Saal, said hundreds of growers in the Stanthorpe area were watching the sky, hoping for rain.

“There has been a reasonable flowering but there is no water in the dams and low subsoil moisture,” he said. “The crop will have to be reliant on rain. It trebles the risk.

“The potential is there for this year’s crop to be above average – – if only it would rain.

“Everybody is holding their breath — and they’ve already turned blue waiting,” he said.