Every August, Sakata Seed America hosts their annual California Spring Trials for seed distributors, growers and other customers in both their Salinas and Woodland research station locations. But this year, they’re doing things a little differently. On Friday, August 12th, Sakata is set to host their first annual Retail Day at their Woodland, California station.
Retail Day will allow retail and foodservice buyers to come get a first-hand look (and taste) of an array of top Sakata varieties in the field.
“Our Sales team is excited to give buyers the true grower experience at Retail Day. We have trials growing for a large amount of our products and can’t wait to demonstrate the difference in quality, taste and appearance directly in the field. Have you ever tasted a watermelon straight from the vine? It’s an amazing experience that we want to share with our downstream customers,” states John Nelson, Director of Sales and Marketing.
Expect to see varieties like Infinite Gold, Sakata’s #1 selling long shelf life cantaloupe and the line of specialty tomatoes packed with umami flavor. Sakata also has new broccoli genetics with desirable attributes including longer shelf life, deeper green color for optimal consumer appeal and no purpling. Look out for top new performers Millennium and Diamante.
Sakata also plans to display a new line-up of baby leaf spinach. C2-606, Seaside, Riverside, Lakeside and Oceanside have been performing well for growers and proving excellent for processing, bunch, clip and frozen markets. What’s more, they now offer downy mildew Race 16 resistance.
“In 2016, UA201519B was named Race 16 by The International Working Group Peronospora. We have tested our commercial spinach varieties for resistance and found that our main baby leaf varieties have resistance to Race 16, along with three of our processing spinach lines, and three of our oriental spinach lines – this is big news for the Sakata spinach program and for all of our customers,” explains Delita Pardue, Product Manager.
Retail Day is part of a major marketing push to educate the retail market about Sakata products and bridge the gap between different levels of the supply chain. The story of ‘seed to table’ is an important one to understand, and creates better consumer education and awareness of the food they’re consuming.
For more information regarding California Field Days and Sakata Retail Day, or to RSVP to attend, please email Jiana Escobar, jescobar@sakata.com.