Hanoi, Dec 3 - Rains late last month disrupted Vietnam's coffee harvesting and triggered early flowering, which could lead to a fall in the country's 2009/10 coffee output, a top industry official said on Wednesday.
Vietnam's early forecast of its falling robusta output could exacerbate a deficit and dent an expected price recovery on the world's 2009/10 coffee market due mainly to falling output in top producer Brazil while demand will keep growing.
"The rains have had two effects: lowering bean quality and early flowering, which means the next crop's output will drop," Chairman of the Vietnam Coffee Association Luong Van Tu told Reuters in an interview, adding that it was too early to quantify the loss in output.
He said Vietnamese farmers had picked about 70 percent of their crop, but rain slowed the harvest and disrupted farmers' drying, creating shipment delays in recent weeks.
"Farmers were not able to dry beans and the volume of coffee cherries left wet has been rising," Tu said.
Rains also caused ripe cherries to drop before farmers picked them, adding to the stock of unprocessed cherries.
"The quality of beans has fallen and thus the ratio of rejected beans will rise," Tu said.
At the same time, rains falling on the coffee trees on which cherries had just been picked have triggered early flowering before the entire harvest ends, he said.
The harvest in Vietnam, the world's second-largest coffee producer after Brazil, often ends in January. The once-a-year flowering starts in February when farmers water trees and feed fertiliser.
But early flowering can lead to a failure to produce large beans or cause losses as flowers easily drop while harvesting is still under way.
The effect was widespread. "Rains have fallen all over the Central Highlands," Tu said, referring to the region that produces 80 percent of Vietnam's total coffee crop.
Early flowering affected 5 percent of Daklak's coffee crop, according to the provincial Agriculture Department report. With around 180,000 hectares of coffee, Daklak is the country's largest growing province, accounting for a third of output.
Meanwhile, Lam Dong province, Vietnam's second-biggest coffee producer, has suffered less early flowering than Daklak, the Agriculture Ministry-run Nong Nghiep newspaper quoted a provincial agriculture official on Tuesday as saying.
Vietnam is projected to harvest a bumper crop this season, with output rising nearly 20 percent to 21.5 million 60-kg bags, industry reports tracking Vietnam's crop data showed.
Last month, International Coffee Organization Executive Director Nestor Osorio said the world coffee markets would see a deficit and price recovery in 2009/10 due to falling output in Brazil while demand would still grow 2 percent annually.