Despite the fact that Covid-19 has disturbed visits and interaction possibilities with growers, plant breeders and their suppliers, De Ruiter wants to continue sharing information and be connected with tomato growers in France. So the French local team worked with Elisabeth Daré from technical advising company ANAHO and two colleagues from Bayer, Stine Petersen, Tomato rootstocks breeder and Maartje Groot, Data scientist.
On June 25, De Ruiter’s team under the lead of Maxime Coqué, held a webinar where growers, technical advisors and plant raisers, were informed on tomato rootstocks. Elisabeth Daré presented some slides focusing on the how and why to select a tomato rootstock, depending on each growing context.
Then Stine Petersen went through the history of grafting, what kind of grafting and which features each De Ruiter rootstock in the portfolio has. Stine also illustrated the vegetative and generative growth of each rootstock. There is basically 'a De Ruiter rootstock for every single need and goal mentioned Stine. The rootstocks breeder illustrated it via the graph below, and took this opportunity to well explain the positioning of the new rootstock introduction from De Ruiter: Equifort.
The webinar session ended with Maartje Groot, who gave some insights in 'Advanced Precision Horticulture' and how data collection and current technologies being developed by De Ruiter’s team in partnership with growers can support tomato rootstock understanding and positioning. These tools can support human 'gut feelings', with data illustration. For rootstocks it's crucial to have a strong data analysis, as humans can't perceive the differences quite as well.
Webinars offer a nice possibility to connect people and to share some information through the entire country and beyond borders. Growers, breeders and technical advisors from each main tomato-growing region in France were online.
If you missed this session, contact your local De Ruiter representative.
For more information: 
De Ruiter
www.deruiterseeds.com