On June 18, during the successful event, for the second consecutive year, research was presented in poster format, addressing crucial topics for the cherry industry.
The cherry industry’s most important technical event of the year, CherryTech 2024, celebrated its second edition with great success. In addition to talks given by specialists who offered advice and analysis on various aspects of the sector, attendees were able to learn from a series of research projects presented in poster format, which attracted the attention of numerous participants.
Areas of interest included technical orchard management, varieties and rootstocks, irrigation, nutrition and use of biostimulants, pest and disease control, and postharvest technologies and management. These posters not only provided an opportunity for researchers to share their findings, but also for attendees to interact directly with the authors, delving into the details of each study.
One of the highlights of the day was the public vote to choose the favourite poster. The award went to the poster presented by Lucía Michel, coordinator of the research, development and innovation area at Martínez y Valdivieso, and current coordinator of the Martínez y Valdivieso Experimental Centre. Her work focused on the validation of a new fertilizer formulated based on salmon protein, called Cipisoil, which has been shown to improve soil quality in both chemical and microbiological terms, positively impacting the growth and quality of the fruit.
Lucía Michel, who was in charge of presenting the winning poster, commented on the experience: “The work we brought here, in poster format, consisted of validating the effectiveness of a new fertilizer that is formulated based on salmon protein to improve soil quality, both in terms of its chemical properties and microbiology, and the consequent response that the plant had in terms of its vegetative radical growth and, obviously, its impact on the productive part and the quality of the fruit. There were many people who came during the day, who found the source of origin of this product very interesting and, of course, the importance of being organic and being able to complement traditional fertilization with it.”
Another prominent participant was Emilio Martínez, R&D leader at Avium, who presented research on pre-harvest water reduction in Regina cherry crops. “The poster we made as a team was related to doing research on reducing water in pre-harvest in a cherry crop, in a Regina variety. This reduction was 46% compared to the field treatment and what we were able to see is that, obviously, there was less growth in size, but there was greater production. And this has to do a bit with an ecological effect of the plant, which is able to retain more fruit to be able to preserve the species and thus, have a greater chance of being able to have more plants.”
Regarding the event, participants highlighted the possibility of bringing technical information closer to the different actors in the industry. “It is important to be able to hold these events in order to present information to producers and to be able to make the crop more sustainable in terms of reducing water, but also, possible techniques or strategies to be able to have better fruit conditions,” Martinez added.
In this way, CherryTech 2024 not only provided a platform for knowledge exchange and the promotion of new technologies, but also facilitated the connection between professionals in the sector.
