Tomatoes for processing are a very important extensive crop in Spain, with the country being the world's third largest producer, only behind China and the United States.
The seed company Top Seeds, which belongs to the Japanese group Mitsui, has been developing two tomato varieties for the past four seasons: Top 4 and Top 5, which compete directly with the market leader: Heinz. Last year, in 2016, two of its varieties yielded excellent results. In fact, as pointed out by Francisco Maleno, director of Top Seeds in Spain and Portugal, "the Top 5 has surpassed the market leader variety, which is the H1015 Heinz, in terms of production, colour quality, pulp density and sugar content."
After several years working on the development of the Top 5 variety, which is a plum tomato for processing, intended mainly for the production of ketchup and pasta sauce, and after the excellent results achieved last year, Top Seeds Ibérica expects its marketing at national level to start in 2018.
This will not be the only long-term goal for Top Seeds Ibérica, since this year it has also started developing the industry pepper or open-ground pepper program. As Francisco Maleno points out, "the first data that we have obtained have resulted in at least two varieties meeting all commercial standards, and we predict the start of their marketing for 2019."
Source: lavozdealmeria.es