Fruit Logistica event in Europe

A group of 6 representatives from Vegetables NZ and TomatoesNZ  travelled to Berlin, Germany last month to attend Fruit Logistica, the largest horticulture supplier event in the World. I was lucky enough to be part of this group representing all greenhouse growers throughout New Zealand, although my particular focus was on gathering information that I could pass on to tomato growers.

The team:

Simon Watson, Managing Director of NZ Hothouse, Auckland (19 hectares of tomatoes and cucumbers) and Vice Chair of TNZ

Chris Cowie, Head Grower at T&G Reparoa (24 hectares of tomatoes over 4 sites)

Liam Griffin, Glasshouse Manager at Southern Paprika, Auckland (26 hectares of capsicums and 6000m2 of snack cucumbers)

Rob Lindsay, Managing Director of Island Horticulture, Christchurch (1.6 hectares of cucumbers) and VNZI board member

Mike Saklani, Managing Director of WingShing Famrs, Auckland (1.2 hectares of tomatoes and cucumbers)

Dinah Cohen, GM of TomatoesNZ, representing 140 commercial tomato growers throughout NZ

 The group from TNZ and VNZI that travelled to Europe

There were around 3,000 exhibitors from over 90 countries and with over 70,000 visitors it’s a big, bustling sprawling city sized event with the opportunity for lots of conversations and seeing products in action. The NZ greenhouse industry faces many challenges and for my conversations with international suppliers I was particularly interested in several key topics

Disease management – the main takeaways that I had were:

With ToBRFV common in Europe but still posing a threat for NZ growers, hygiene around the greenhouse (GH) + growing resistant varieties are the best management a grower can have in place for when this virus arrives. That said, 2 Dutch growers I spoke to with over 30 hectares of tomatoes each, have chosen not to grow any resistant varieties yet because they feel the risk posed by the virus is secondary to the risk of crop issues around yield, taste and general quality of the resistant varieties. Instead hygiene management at their properties is paramount and includes standard practices such as employee uniforms including shoes for workers, colour coded to days of the week, hand and shoe washing at every entrance point that cannot be bypassed, dipping of gloved hands and tools after each row. These measures were in addition to: no entry into the GH for anyone that isn’t directly working the crop – including marketing and sales staff; operating a one-way system in their packhouse, trucks coming onto the property are disinfected before being loaded and  drivers wear PPE; owning, washing and disinfecting their own ‘closed loop’ crates which are kept out of the GH.

There are some impressive washing stations available and products for cleaning make some bold claims such as Huwan-San and the newer ‘Virba-San’ from Roam Technology (similar products but Virba doesn’t contain silver). Both are available in NZ and are said to be as effective as Virkon but without the corrosive nature. See here for more details.

An example of a foot and hand washing station common before entry to GH is possible in Europe. 

Having said that, we were repeatedly told that once you have ToBRFV, it’s impossible to get rid of it. In fact one rep claimed that ToBRFV can lie dormant for years before resurfacing as an active virus. So back to hygiene and resistant seed varieties being the insurance policy that growers in other parts of the work are relying on.

Seed companies were all focused on promoting their ToBRFV resistant varieties. We tasted many of these during our time away and there were no stand outs but quality  including taste can differ according to the growing environment and personal preference plays a part. The good news is that there are lots of resistant options for both large and small tomatoes, loose and truss and the seed companies say that there is good availability of seeds. The best advice would be to order some small samples to trial in your greenhouse and see if you find a variety that works for you. Bear in mind that there is no standardisation for the level of resistance that the seeds have, so each company can essentially claim whatever they want. Some good questions to ask are;

1. What generation of resistance are you producing at the moment (the higher the better)
2. Does the resistance kill the pathogen or lessen the symptoms

 ToBRFV resistant tomatoes 

Biological controls – there are lots of biological controls on the European market. While registering a new to New Zealand beneficial insect would be extremely lengthy process with no guarantee of success, there are some biological fungicides and insecticides that might have a slightly easier registration journey. While some of the bigger companies seemed to be a little dismissive of trying to enter the ‘small’ (comparatively) NZ market, others were interested in investigating the registration process. I will make sure that I maintain contact and push for more tools for growers.

In terms of energy saving tech, I will cover this more next month as we saw several options during our visits and meetings in the Netherlands. However alternatives to natural gas or coal were not widely represented – syn gas was one option we talked to a supplier about and is worth further investigation as inputs can be much broader than for a biomass boiler (e.g. straw and plant material) and as well as heating water, the output also produces high density CO2 which can be fed back into the greenhouse for improved yields. Operating out of Australia as Optimal Group, check out more https://optimalgroup.com.au/renewable-gas