We saw many interesting innovations and products wandering around Fruit Attraction in Madrid including pest control, new mechanised solutions for agriculture, shelf life extending humidifiers, new packaging and more.
The Spaniards believe that insects can be captured with colour traps, thus avoiding or drastically reducing treatments. Of course colour traps are not new, but they are not that widely used. They are just bits of cardboard covered in a strong glue.
Colour traps
Traps are available in yellow, red, black, light blue and blue and each colour attracts a different type of insect: for example, Tuta absoluta affecting tomatoes is attracted by black, yellow attracts diptera and flies, blue attracts thrips and red attracts fruit flies. They must be placed at regular intervals a few metres apart.
Nebulisation
From fields to supermarket shelves. Aqualife humidifiers prolong the shelf-life of vegetables making them generally more attractive. The display included humidifiers for vertical units as well as for horizontal units with nebulised water.
A steel tube with holes at regular intervals maintains the correct humidity level for vegetables.
New clementine packaging
Tango focused on packaging as it introduced both Monster and Christmas themed packaging for its citrus fruit. Other options include sets of two clementines.
A lot of garlic by displayed Spanish producers
Spain is the leading garlic producer in Europe and many producers attended the fair. Ovsi even built a windmill made of garlic bulbs for the occasion.
And, while pomelos are still relatively unknown in many parts of the world, one company even uses them to make fruit juice.
Many companies in the mechanisation sector also attended Fruit Attraction 2017 in Madrid. Visitors were shown the weeder displayed by Oliver Agro, a company from Verona.
"We chose to display some of our precision weeders, which are suitable for various kinds of vegetables. The latest is Colibri, which can work on rows that are just 8 cm apart," explains sales manager Moira Signorini.
Moira Signorini
Other models were also on display, such as Rrotoblitz, which is equipped with inter-row rotors that work on the 35 cm between rows. It can be used to break the soil as well as for ridging and levelling operations.
Perfrutto, a company from Bologna represented by Marco Zibordi, Oreste d'Ambrisio and Corrado Puppo (in the photo below), focuses on grade forecasting based on a model developed by the University of Bologna. The method works mainly with apples, kiwis and pears, but is currently being tested on table grapes and citrus fruit.
"Thanks to field measurements and our algorithms, producers know the grade of their fruit two months before harvesting and therefore have time to make changes if their gross saleable production is not satisfactory."
Knowing what's ahead means that each decision can be estimated considering the GSP deriving from the average price of the product in the last 10 years. Recently, some apple orchards improved their GSP up to €2000 per hectare.
Knowing what's ahead means that each decision can be estimated considering the GSP deriving from the average price of the product in the last 10 years. Recently, some apple orchards improved their GSP up to €2000 per hectare.
Top Control from the Bolzano province also attended. Marketing manager Johann Strozzega (in the photo below) explained that some of their new products, for example an improved table grape packaging system, have even been exported to Chile. They told that a new Top Control branch will also be opened in Spain as well.
For more information:
Oliver Agro
moira.s@dittaoliver.com
www.oliveragro.com
Perfrutto
marco@hkconsulting.it
www.hkconsulting.it
Top Control
marketing@topcontrol.it
www.topcontrol.it
Oliver Agro
moira.s@dittaoliver.com
www.oliveragro.com
Perfrutto
marco@hkconsulting.it
www.hkconsulting.it
Top Control
marketing@topcontrol.it
www.topcontrol.it