Prevention Strategies

Harvesting

• During picking use a clean mat or tarpaulin beneath the tree to avoid cherries coming in contact with the soil, and to reduce contamination with foreign material on the ground;
• Harvesting cherries from the soil should be avoided as they can be highly contaminated with fungal spores, and thus present a high OTA risk;
• The removal of overripe cherries, in certain situations, may be regarded as a useful OTA-prevention measure;
• Never store fresh cherries (piled or in bags), and process them as quickly as possible (applies to both wet and dry processing).