Early Sweet™ grapes are set to make a big volume breakthrough in the UK market this year and Nomi Karniel-Padan, director of breeder Grapa, was in the country last week to meet the category’s leading players and put a face to the variety.
The GRAPAES variety has been part of Grapa’s breeding programme since the early 1990s and began the laborious process of obtaining protected breeder’s rights in 1999.
Two poor years of weather in trial sites in Spain and Italy held the process up, but this year Early Sweet™ is commercially available in large volumes for the first time.
The crisp, juicy type can fill a window of at least a week prior to the first arrivals of Perlette and two weeks ahead of Sugraone in a market looking for a consistent early variety to enhance performance at the beginning of each country’s season and eliminate the need for inconsistent late-season varieties.
“We have a clear advantage,” said Karniel-Padan, the fifth generation in her Israeli family's farming business. “Early Sweet™ is the earliest grape available and it is extremely consistent.” The variety has potential nine-month availablility, from both the northern and southern hemispheres, with a gap from August to October, when Grapa believes the market potential is limited.
Grapa, which has its headquarters in Cyprus, has authorised growers for Early Sweet™ in Israel, Spain, Italy, Morocco, Tunisia, South Africa, the US and Australia - all of whom are at different stages of developing the variety.
“We choose our growers very carefully, and we are not trying to expand too quickly with the variety. We do not want it to become ‘the next Superior Seedless’. For our growers to be successful, we need to find the balance between volume and premium,” Karniel-Padan added.
“From mid-May to the second week of June is a key time for Early Sweet™ in the UK, because the quality in other varieties is not quite there. I think now that the availability is there, we are going to see volumes increase every year.”
