A major new project has been unveiled that is promising to massively increase the volumes of British organic apples to be grown and sold through Sainsbury’s.
The retailer hosted the launch of the Organic Concept Orchard last week at the farm of H E Hall & Son in Marden, Kent. Sainsbury’s has worked with the grower and marketing desk OrchardWorld to develop the concept.
At present only three percent of organic apples sold in this country are home grown, but it is hoped that the Organic Concept Orchard could bring figure up as high as 70 percent. Varieties produced will range from Cox, Gala, Braeburn, Bramley and Russet to Estival, Pinova and Early Windsor.
Last year a conventional concept orchard was also launched in a bid to boost yields using modern techniques.
The project aims to produce 25 tonnes per hectare of organic apples in the second year of planting, rising to 50 tonnes per hectare in year three, compared to around 10 tonnes per hectare in year eight on a conventional orchard.
Rather than introducing brand new techniques, the Organic Concept orchard instead brings together some of the most successful systems from around the world and applies them within the one site.
It uses a Dutch ‘Table Top’ system, which was developed for conventional production to combine high yields of high quality apples with very efficient use of scarce and expensive resources such as water, fossil fuels and grade one land.
The orchard features 10,700 trees on an M9 dwarfing rootstock spaced at 80cm to 1.2m depending on variety in rows 3.2m apart. Applications of inputs such as manures and pest control systems are based on a volume per hectare, meaning that if one produces 50 tonnes per hectare as opposed to 10 tonnes, the amount of input per tonne of output is only one fifth of that currently used.
Speaking at the launch, OrchardWorld’s Mike Jobbins said that good agricultural practice and attention to detail are key to the success of the project, with investment in a weather station and products such as pheromone traps also in use.
“You can see similar orchards in the world. The concept part of it is bringing all the ideas together and putting it all into place,” he explained.
Sainsbury’s category manager Connor McVeigh told Commercial Grower that the retailer views organics as a massive growth area, and one that is increasing 45 percent year on year. He added that he supermarket is backing organics in a number of areas, not least by changing the layout in store so that consumers can find organic produce together with conventional.
The supermarket’s organic produce buyer, Russell Crowe, added: “Sainsbury’s is committed to sourcing as much organic produce from the UK as possible, and our Organic Concept Orchard is a fantastic example of where we have been working with researchers and growers to make growing organic more viable.”
