Global Economic Importance of Quince: Current Situation, Forecasting, and Competitiveness Analysis

In this study, the quince sector was evaluated globally, and the changes in production and trade have been examined in light of the last 15 years of data from 2005 to 2019. In addition, production and exports were forecasted for Turkiye. According to the findings, the global quince production area increased by 55.80%, while production increased by 41.67%. These increases have led to the development of the quince trade, and exports have increased more than 100% in the last 15 years. While Turkiye and the Netherlands are the top exporters, the Russian Federation and Germany are the top importers. With the autoregressive integrated moving average model, 60 years of data covering 1961-2020 for production and 50 years of data covering 1971-2020 for export were used for production and export forecasts for Turkiye. Forecasts showed that Turkiye's production would increase to 212,108 tons and exports to 18,685 tons in 2023. Balassa and Vollrath's indices were used to determine the competitiveness of countries. Indices were calculated for Turkiye, Netherlands, Spain, Greece, Austria, Azerbaijan, Germany, Chile, USA, and Uzbekistan, which were important quince exporting countries. Also, by using these indexes, countries were ranked in terms of their competitiveness with the Analytical Hierarchy Process Method. The results showed that Turkiye had a comparative advantage in all indices. Azerbaijan, Greece, and Uzbekistan were also among the countries with a comparative advantage. To increase Turkiye's quince exports, it is considered essential to increase the production of processed quince for foreign markets that do not have fresh consumption habits.