Early Sweet, the licensed white seedless variety bred by Israeli company Grapa, is set to make even bigger strides in the UK market next year.
New on the scene in commercial volumes only last year, the variety has quickly overcome the traditional suspicion of new strains. One importer described it as having “the best potential of any variety out there” last week.
Grapa director Nomi Karniel-Padan told FPJ that a greater understanding of the technical side of the variety will lead to larger volumes on shelf. “It looks like the retailers have recognised that for the variety to come in with the required sugar levels of 14.5 brix plus, it should be more of a creamy colour than yellow. That’s an important change; Early Sweet does not need to be green like Sugraone,” she said.
Fruit has been grown to date in the Jordan Valley, Israel, Egypt, Spain, Italy, Tunisia and Morocco, as well as in the US and Australia. South African growers are on course to provide large quantities in two years, but applications from Greek growers signal a change in the perception of the variety, said Karniel-Padan.
“The application from Greece is very pleasing. We have always felt that Early Sweet is not only a good grape for its earliness, but will stand up alongside Sugraone on shelf. Now that a traditionally later production region has recognised this, I think that Early Sweet will become an important variety in its own right, not just for its marketing window,” she said.
One of the main aims of Grapa is the protection of growers around the world who have paid for the early Sweet licence. A Spanish company Geslive has been contracted to monitor the situation and grower sites, as the volume of fruit continues to grow.
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