Hargreaves Plants hosted an Albion open day last week in Kent to celebrate the success and further promote the everbearer strawberry variety. Growers and retailers gathered to hear presentations from Javier Cano Pecci of Eurosemillas, Jane Fairlie of Hargreaves Plants’ R&D unit and Rupert Hargreaves, director of Hargreaves Plants. They were then invited to taste Albion and rival strawberries varieties to make up their own minds about the variety.
Spanish company, Eurosemillas is licensed to market the University of California’s strawberry varieties worldwide. Cano Pecci said that Albion was developed as a replacement for Diamante in 2004 and is now California’s most widely grown everbearer. Cano Pecci works closely with Hargreaves Plants to devlop the Albion variety in the UK. ‘We are learning more about the UK’s growing needs year by year, and I’m sure we can eventually increase yields in the UK by 35 per cent,” he said.
The open day also involved the presentation of Hargreaves Plants’ Albion trial interim results. The trials are taking place at the company’s R&D unit at Long Sutton, Lincolnshire. The trial consists of 150 plants per plot - 10 plots in total - on poly-covered raised beds with t-tape irrigation, which were covered by Spanish tunnels during the last week of May for rain protection. The trial aims to find which plant type, out of fresh bare root, coldstored bare root, tray plants, misted tips and waiting bed, produces the maximum Albion yield. Fairlie reported that initial harvest showed that misted tips planted in March had the earliest pick dates, best total Class 1 and yield results by mid-July, which continued until August. Predicted conclusions are that tray plants or misted tips will prove to be the preferred plant types for this cultivar due to excellent establishment and high yield per plant.
Hargreaves concluded the open day and said that enquiries to date suggest that there will be more than 8,000,000 Albion plants in the UK by 2008, making up 25 per cent of the total marketplace. “Albion is more economical to grow and fits the demands of both growers and retailers,” he said.
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