From the 23rd to the 25th of last October, the city of Midelt hosted, to the delight of visitors and professionals in the sector, the 2014 edition of the Apple Festival, an annual event dedicated to promoting the agricultural potential of the province in the field of fruit-bearing rosaceae, particularly the apple tree, a noble fruit with proven medicinal virtues.

As usual, festival-goers attended musical evenings in a festive atmosphere and tasted the delights of the juicy apple that the region abounds in. For their part, arboriculturists displayed the varieties of local apples, the fruit of a whole year's work, and to provoke desire, commercial operators exhibited their agricultural equipment and machinery.

To combine business with pleasure, the initiators of this third edition chose the theme: "Quality, standardisation and valorisation of the product for better marketing". A theme debated by various stakeholders, among others, the National Office for Agricultural Advice (ONCA Meknès-Tafilalet) and the National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA).

For its part, the Federation for the Development of Arboriculture in Morocco (FéDAM) presented, during the study day organised in this context, the role of the professional organisation in the valorisation and marketing of apples.

The festival was a favourable occasion to address and discuss the problems and obstacles encountered during this season by the arboriculturists of the Meknès-Tafilalet region, but also that of Fès-Boulmane. This concerns the marketing of their harvests, particularly that of apples, which resulted in a shortfall that can reach up to five dirhams per kilogram, compared to previous seasons. For the varieties widely spread in the two regions, namely the early variety: Gala, and the two others, Golden Delicious and Red Delicious. Last season, the selling price of Gala at the orchards was between 8 and 10 DH/kilo, against 4 DH per kilo this year; the selling price last year for the other two varieties was 5 to 7 DH against 2 and rarely 4 DH this year. A situation that leads arboriculturists, and especially the small farmers who are majority represented on the agricultural map in question, to question the future of the sale of their production. According to them, no one can contest or deny the positive role played by the State, via the supervisory ministry in terms of aid granted to farmers from land development to the acquisition of agricultural equipment and machinery, but what is missing are awareness and advisory campaigns, an essential action but far from being effective for the moment.

The apple tree is a variety of fruit-bearing rosaceae, which requires, in addition to the arid or semi-arid climate to favour its development, optimal irrigation, hence its location at high and medium altitudes of the High and Middle Atlas.

The architectural forms that the trees in apple orchards take, in most cases, are either the traditional form called Goblet, a form created with three to four main branches radiating from the trunk, or an axial branch form.

Let us recall that apple growing was introduced to Morocco during the Protectorate. Since then, its surface area has not ceased to expand thanks to an income characterised by clear profitability compared to the cereals grown previously.