We spoke with Alejandro Navarro, Director of IVU Chile and IVU California, about the impact that these early cherry varieties have had in Europe. He also gave us details of the second field day to be held in Holland.
For the second consecutive year, Meda Cherry, a company located in Teno, Maule region, and dedicated to the research and production of new early cherry programs, will hold a field day in Holland; the activity aims to publicize the IVU varieties and their advances in Europe.
“We sent the varieties to Europe several years ago. We have a very well-evaluated and developed test in Holland and they have a test orchard of all the early, medium and late varieties, so it is a good place to compare ourselves with our genetic programs and within the early varieties we have had fruit in the last three or four years. Since last year they realized that ours is the best and they have paid more attention to us, they help us and cooperate, because obviously they are interested in the program and, for that reason, last year we had a field day and invited people who we are associating with the project. There we are working with the largest cherry nursery in Europe, which is Flowers and also with an Italian company called Fruit Innovation, which works with kiwis especially and now with cherries with us, to develop the same model that we have in Chile in typical varieties where there is controlled management of the supply and one participates in the fruit market," explained Alejandro Navarro, Director of IVU Chile.
The event will be held at the Fruit Tech Campus on the 16th and will bring together attendees from countries such as South Africa, Poland, England, Italy, France, Holland, Belgium, Hungary, Switzerland, Spain, among others.
“We believe that there will be 40-50 people, especially from Europe, including Norway, because this winter in Europe we planted the tests in 8 countries due to the interest there is; we set up different trials, plantations of 10 varieties of this new program, in England, Norway, France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Hungary and Greece; we have also seen commercial interest from Chilean companies that are in Europe, that have the varieties in Chile, that are associated with Europeans, who want to develop them there as well, so there is an interest from Chile to develop them in Europe, so that is helping us to move the cart a little faster than we thought and that is why these field days are interesting, because people from Europe will be able to see it in the field,” Navarro explained.
The IVU programme is based on the fact that these are early varieties, but with the quality of mid-late varieties. In Europe, they are currently looking for good cherries that are earlier than Kordia, which is why IVU varieties have generated great interest in the industry. In parallel, this programme already has development agreements in Chile, the USA, South Africa and is in negotiations with Australia and New Zealand.
Program
The second field day organized by Meda will begin at 10:00 a.m., local time in the Netherlands, with a welcome at the “Fruit Tech Campus”, followed by the “Introduction to the IVU breeding program”, by Alejandro Navarro, Director of IVU Chile. Afterwards, Ronald Vermeulen will lead the block “IVU Cherry Evaluation at Fruitmasters”.
At around 11:00 a.m., Sjaak Walraven will talk about “Tests in Europe and the status of virus-free material at NAKT”; then at 11:20 a.m. there will be a short break, followed by a visit to the FuitMasters fruit test orchard at 11:30 a.m., where Alejandro Navarro and Ronald Vermeulen will analyse the collection of 12 IVU varieties and other early varieties.
The event will end at 1:30 p.m. with lunch at the Vernooij orchard.
“We are going to do something much more organized this year at FuitMasters. They have a place there called Fruit Tech Campus, which is an agricultural school, which must be subsidized by the community, for young Dutch people who want to continue in fruit growing, to retain them, educate them, with high technology associated with fruit growing in apples, cherries and pears, which is what they do there; and in this same Fruit Tech Campus there is the variety trial that we have, we are going to have different presentations, so that new people who come to the project can learn about it in more detail and then we go to the field and finish with a meal to build some camaraderie in an orchard of the largest producer in Holland, where we also have a testing,” said Alejandro Navarro.
The reason for early varieties
For some time now, the concept of “early varieties” has been increasingly heard in the global cherry industry; but what is the relevance of all this genetic management? Does it have a purely commercial objective?
“The great message of our varieties is post-harvest; in addition, there are qualities such as firmness, which are firmer than others, but if they did not have post-harvest, all that is nice would be useless in Chile. This is the only genetic program that is born with a filter in its selection process, when we select the best varieties, pedicel size, firmness, sugar, and after all the filter we added post-harvest and from there we brought them to Chile, and from there we validated them for 4-5 years to see how they behaved here. For Europeans to be told that a variety can last 45 days, they cannot believe it, they are not thinking only of a new variety, early or mid-season, it depends on the variety, they associate it with not selling in a hurry, selling in a week.”
This project is associated with the Meda variety, a protected brand in Europe, Chile and Asia, and was created by the company Viverosur, an entity that provided its resources and R&D team to develop this project, where Alejandro is also one of the directors.
Meda Cherry
According to the website of “Meda Cherry Early Cherries”, its varieties were Developed by Marvin Nies over 50 years in California and after 10 years of rigorous selection by the IVU team, together with the most important companies in the marketing of cherries in Chile. Today they reach the world market to occupy a space where it is not common to have large-calibre, firm, sweet cherries with good post-harvest.”
Since 2009, after reaching an agreement with Marvin Nies, Alejandro Navarro and his research team began to work on improving a series of varieties. To date, they have established their projects in Chile, California, United States, and now in Europe, where they are carrying out different tests, with the aim of introducing the early varieties, prior to Kordia, in new international markets. This initiative has captured the attention of producers and companies from different European countries, which will meet on June 16 at the second “Meda Cherry Field Day” in Holland.
