I choose security

Pest and diseases are an important threat to the security of our business and we take it very serious. We need to keep major diseases out of our greenhouses, because yield losses can be devastating and the cost of getting rid of those diseases are astronomical. Especially here in California, where we deal with high humidity’s most of the summer, we do a lot to improve the security of our crops. For example, we designed our greenhouses to improve security, we have strict hygiene regulations and all our recirculation water is disinfected to kill potential pathogens before it’s reused.

We choose Progression from Nunhems for several reasons, but one of the main reasons is the resistance to powdery mildew. That’s one of the most important diseases to control with our climate, growing in a semi closed greenhouses. Especially in what we call June gloom conditions (with coastal fog and very high humidity) we often had issues with mildew. Right now we only trial varieties that have mildew resistance. Of course the other attributes of the variety need to meet our objectives as well. In the case of Progression, the production was often better than the standard variety and in all cases the fruit size was bigger by an average of 8 -12 grams in a crop cycle. Especially in winter that’s a benefit to us.

Since we started growing Progression, we have one less thing to worry about, as we have no more mildew on the calyx. With this variety that problem is gone and that’s a big step forward for us when it comes to improving the security of the crops we grow. Just like we tell all other breeders, mildew resistance is a prerequisite for us if you want us to try or grow your varieties. On the bigger fruited varieties Nunhems has provide that with Progression.