Character and comparative advantage: Up to 180 000 tonnes of sweet cherries are produced annually in Uzbekistan. Agroecological conditions are favourable for growing sweet cherries with the minimal use of chemicals, and sweet cherries enable diversified and sustainable farming systems, including agroforestry and pastoralism.
Favourable climate and geographical conditions, relatively low input costs, numerous smallholder producers in every region of the country, seasonal advantages over local suppliers in export markets, and the availability of cold storage and transportation companies make sweet cherries among the most important and widely grown fruits in Uzbekistan.
The sweet cherry has wide agroecological adaptability and versatility in Uzbekistan, with the potential to help alleviate poverty among rural households.

Producing areas: Smallholder farms are the largest producers of sweet cherries and other agrifood products in the country, accounting for 70 percent of the total horticultural output. In addition to commercial gardening, the fruit is widely grown in homesteads throughout the country. Sweet cherry cultivation is mostly accomplished by family farms, and women are involved in the production and processing. Homestead gardens and fields in Uzbekistan are multi-crop agroecosystems that provide owners with food (especially fruits and vegetables), timber, fuelwood and income.

Demands: Some local sweet cherry varieties are not well known or competitive in global markets, reducing their demand in favour of more commercially available cherry varieties. However, sweet cherries from Uzbekistan have the potential to be promoted in local, regional and international markets.

Beneficiaries: Uzbekistan can become a global powerhouse in sweet cherry production and export, primarily benefiting the smallholder families who are the primary producers of sweet cherries in the country. Fragmentation often prevents farmers from meeting the internationally accepted standardization, quality and volume requirements that prevail in export markets. However, the OCOP programme hopes to alleviate many of these issues. The Ministry of Agriculture of Uzbekistan has played a leading role in the implementation of OCOP in the country, identifying further steps to promote green technologies to support the sustainable development of the cherry value chain.

In 2023, more than 400 producers and value chain actors from more than 15 districts in the Fergana and Samarkand regions participated in a series of on-site training workshops on sweet cherries. Farmers’ capacities have been developed based on innovation approaches for better production, including tree training and pruning, precision irrigation and fertilization, integrated pest management, biopesticides and precision spraying of pesticides, new sweet cherry varieties and rootstocks, establishing modern sweet cherry orchards, and creating a value chain.

Uzbekistan has established a national task force for OCOP that is composed of representatives from the Ministry of Agriculture, FAO, research institutes, universities, the private sector and farmers’ associations.