The 7th Regional Technical Conference on Blueberries, which is organized for the seventh consecutive year by the Association of Producers of Blueberries of Mesopotamia Argentina (Apama) and that is already a reference for the sector each year, will be held this year in the Convention Centre of Concordia, Entre Rios, Argentina, on June 25 and 26, because it has grown so much.
This year, expectations are more than three hundred producers, professionals, consultants and technicians linked to production, from different parts of Latin America will attend the event. Blueberry production has grown considerably in recent years, both in tons produced and labour employed, and has positioned Concordia as the epicentre of blueberry production, both nationally and internationally.
Therefore, this year the conference will be held at the Convention Centre of Concordia, which can host up to a thousand people and has the necessary infrastructure for this meeting, its lectures, workshops and business rounds.
This industry's growth and the consolidation of Concordia as a leader in the country makes the city a reference for other areas that also have a great blueberry production, such as Tucuman and Buenos Aires. Producers from Uruguay, Chile and Peru, will also attend the meeting. The latter two are Argentina's direct competition in terms of fruit exports to markets such as Canada, the United States and Europe.
The lectures will be given by the highly renown referents in the industry, such as Jorge Andres Varela, director of Berry Fresh LLC in California and also president of AgroBerry Chile & Argentina, who will present the latest news on the world's blueberries trading scene. As every year, the results of the Apama census will also be presented, and this year it will include the work of APRATUC in Tucuman, which will show a clear picture of the local production, especially following the introduction of new varieties in the last harvest.
Engineer Mariano Winograd, president of Giava SA, will lead the debate on Strategies for the Development of the Internal Market. The agenda includes "2014 Apama Research Results ", "Agro-climatic Outlook for 2015/2016", "Design Criteria and Management of Drip Irrigation Systems "," Updating New and traditional varieties of blueberries "and" General Economic Outlook."
The Conference has been held for seven years in a row and has always been supported by local, provincial and national authorities each year. The leading and largest companies in the production, export and logistics sector also sponsor the event. Last year, the event was attended by almost two hundred people, a number that is expected to be doubled this 2015.
This year, as a special case, the conference will also be a kind of prelude to the meeting of the International Blueberry Organization, which brings together all producing countries in the world, and that will be hosted in the cities of Concordia and Salto in August 2016.