Painted faces, all-night queues, sun hats, Mexican waves and heads moving in unison from side to side.

All are familiar signs that the Wimbledon tennis tournament is in full swing.

However, one key ingredient could be in short supply this year as fans flock to cheer on Scottish star Andy Murray.

For this year's crop of Scottish strawberries –long a staple of Wimbledon crowds – have been badly hit by the winter freeze.

About a quarter of the UK's soft fruit is produced in Scotland – but hundreds of thousands of strawberry plants have been killed by frost, experts have warned. Some farmers have had to spend as much as £90,000 replacing dead crops. There have been warnings the difficult season could result in higher prices on supermarket shelves – or possibly even a shortage of supply.

Peter Thomson, chairman of the soft fruit committee at the National Farmers Union Scotland (NFUS), said: "Some growers are reporting that whole fields have been damaged and will have to be replaced."

The problem has mainly hit strawberries grown in grow-bags, rather than directly in the soil, he said. As the frost falls on to the plant, the top part, known as the crown, turns black and dies.

Mr Thomson said even one hectare of lost strawberry crops can mean the farmer has to replace about 50,000 plants, each costing about 30p.

"One grower I know has had to replace six hectares of ground with new strawberry plants… so that's a total of £90,000 that he will have to pay for new plants," he said.

He added that replanting was being delayed due to grow bags remaining frozen. This could lead to delays in strawberries hitting the shelves "in some areas".

Rupert Hargreaves, whose company Hargreaves Plants supplies more than 30 million strawberry and soft fruit plants to growers around Europe,

said: "It would be fair to say that if the market ends up being short of fruit then we could realistically see an increase in price."

His company is working flat out to try to replace plants killed by frost. "Because of the bad weather… we have seen an increase in growers wanting to buy plant material because they may have had frost damage," he said. And he warned that the market supply of soft fruit plants was "as tight as it has ever been so there's likely to be a shortage of plant material".



Scotland is renowned across the world for its soft fruit production, with growth centred around Tayside, Perthshire and Fife. The Scottish raspberry sector alone is worth about £12 million annually.