WARSAW (AFP) - Apple farmers in Poland are facing a crisis after a string of cold snaps, and the country could be piped by China as the EU's top raw juice supplier, officials warned on Tuesday.

"We estimate losses at more than 80 percent of production, hitting four or even six billion zlotys (1.0-1.5 billion euros, 1.45-2.2 billion dollars)," Miroslaw Maliszewski, president of the Polish Association of Fruit Producers, told AFP.

"This is the biggest disaster we've seen since the Second World War," he said.

Bozena Nosecka, a senior official at the Polish government's Agricultural and Food Economics Institute, said the situation was "tragic".

"We risk losing our position as the top supplier of concentrated apple juice on the European market," Nosecka said.

"China will certainly take advantage," she added.

In 2006, Poland churned out 200,000 tons of concentrated apple juice -- the raw material for the finished product sold on shop shelves -- representing around half of total European Union production.

Last year, Poland held an 18.3-percent share of the EU concentrated apple juice market, ahead of China (17.2 percent) and Germany (16 percent).

Poland's slot as the EU's top apple producer is also under threat, with Italian growers likely to leapfrog their Polish counterparts, officials warned.

Nosecka said that the two cold snaps, which brought freezing overnight temperatures on April 22-23 and May 1-3, had also hit Poland's cherry, pear, and strawberry producers.