Traditionally focused on early and extra-early stone fruit programmes, Planasa is now looking towards later varieties.
Fruit Today euromagazine talked to the manager for this segment, Paco Murillo, who explained the company’s new plans.
“Our present aim is to complete the calendar almost exclusively devoted to early and extra-early varieties. We now reach the end of June in Andalusia and the end of July in Huesca. We are also developing new varieties to produce in August.”
The sector is experiencing a new trend marked by the prices that stone fruit starts to acquire at the end of August, September and even October. “All the breeders are looking at this segment, but we are aware that anything can happen to this fruit – six months on the tree with the cost and risk that this entails.”
In yellow-fleshed peaches, Planasa offers an interesting programme, with which it has already made some plantations, with the variety, PlaGold 9; a magnificent fruit that is harvested in the last week of April and the first week of May, with A-AA sizes, 100% garnet red in colour and slightly acidic.
In the Lerida region, PlaGold 19 Sweet stands out, harvested in the middle of June and PlaGold 250 Sweet, in production for the first time, as well as PlaGold 22, which, although it is a variety that has only been on the market for a few years, has become one of the essential ones.
In nectarines, the company has the Zincal11, which gives continuity to PlaGold 9. It has A and AA sizes, with a highly attractive red colour and is slightly acidic. It also has a characteristic valued by the market: the flesh that remains attached to the stone has a reddish colour.
In this same nectarine segment, just before the Big Top, the Zincal 18 Sweet appears, which could fill in an interesting gap in the market. Coinciding with the Big Top, but with higher quality fruit, the company offers the Zincal 25.
Long distance varieties. Since the stone fruit export protocol to China was approved last campaign, different breeders have placed some of their potential to working on varieties that stand up to long distance journeys.
In this vein, Planasa traditionally has already been carrying out long life cold storage trials, not just in Spain, but also in Chile where its subsidiary company is using some of its varieties.
