The pink tomato from Barbastro is originally a variety from the municipality of Cádiz that gives it its name, with a fruit that stands out for its large size and pinkish color, its thin skin and its high Brix. In the province of Almería, the San Isidro Agricultural Cooperative (CASI) is, together with Ecoinver, the only company that produces this tomato variety. In the current campaign, CASI has cultivated the Candido de Barbastro tomato variety in a total of 25 hectares, all of them in the Levante area of Almeria, which has the water, soil, climate and winds that the product needs.
The destination for this variety is the domestic market, given the crop's special characteristics, as it has a short post-harvest shelf life that and needs to be handled with care.
The retailer Mercadona started selling this tasty tomato last year. It can be found on the shelves of many stores in Almeria and other areas of Spain. The supermarket chain acquired a total of 1.2 million kilos of tomatoes of the Cándido variety between November 2018 and May 2019, all of them grown in Almería.
Crop management
The crop's management involves the use of integrated production techniques, says Roque Oller, head of the Technical Department of CASI. This entails the use of treatments with few chemicals, of fertilizers with very low nitrogen levels, and of Nesidiocoris tenuis as a biological control measure, with 100% of the pollination carried out with bumblebee hives to ensure the uniformity of the process. The planting is carried out through grafting, since it is a tomato with no resistances.
The ideal greenhouse for its production should be high, to improve ventilation and light intensity, and should never be flat to avoid problems arising from moisture and fungal diseases.
CASI handles between 8,000 and 10,000 kilos per day. Taking into account that the yield oscillates between 12 and 14 kilos per square meter, the 25 hectares that CASI has will produce between 3 and 3.5 million kilos of the exclusive Candido variety this year.
Source: diariodealmeria.es
