In time with the start of the Southern European season, BerryWorld Spain organised the first Grower Day of the season with our growers in Portugal, Morocco and Spain.
Attendees were welcomed by Ivan Leache, BerryWorld Spain Managing Director and were taken by the Pre-harvest team through the planned trials for the season for all berries.
For raspberries, some early trial results were already shared and compared with those from the previous season while the focus for blackberries was around the new BerryWorld ® Midnight™ which continues to be studied at the R&D site.
For 2020 there will be more than 20 strawberry selections being trialed at the R&D site with the aim of improving production curves of our well-known varieties at the same time that we complete the varietal description of the new varieties.
Regarding blueberries, the new selections of the MBO programme were also presented and attendees had the opportunity to see these in the field. The BerryWorld Spain Pre-harvest team visited breeder Ridley Bell earlier this year in Australia to get to know these varieties first-hand and are now excited to see the behaviour of these in Southern Europe.
It was a productive session which marks the start of an exciting season for the BerryWorld team and growers in the Iberian region, a key growing area for the BerryWorld Group.