13Evaluation of chilling requirements (CR) of cultivars of temperate fruit trees provides key 14 information to assess regional suitability, according to winter chill, for both industry expansion 15 and ongoing profitability as climate change continues. Traditional methods for calculating CR 16 use climate controlled chambers and define CR using a fixed budburst percentage, usually close 17 to 50% (CR-50%), without considering the productivity level associated to this percentage. This 18 CR-50% definition may underestimate the real CR of tree crops for optimal productivity. This 19 underestimation is particularly important to consider as winter chill accumulation is declining 20 in many regions due to climate change. In this work we used sweet cherry to analyse the 21 traditional method for calculating CR in many Rosaceae species (CR-50%) and compared the 22 results with more a restrictive, productivity focused method, with CR defined with a 90% bud 23 2 break level (90%, CRm-90%) close to the optimal budburst which assures productivity. Climate 24 projections of winter chill suitability across Europe using CR-50% and CRm-90% were 25 calculated. Regional suitability landscape was highly dependent on the method used to define 26 CR and differences were found for a wide area of the European geography, both cold and mild 27 winter areas. Our results suggest a need to use an optimal budburst level for the assessment of 28 CR for sweet cherry. The use of traditional methods to determine CR can result in an 29 underestimation of productivity CR with negative consequences for the fruit industry, 30 particularly as climate change advances. 31