US: Strawberry soil alternatives sought
From there onwards are 2 acres worth of experimental crops - strawberries grown with different growing mediums to soil. Mixtures of peat and coir.
The plants not grown in soil are slightly smaller, and not as densely foliated as those that are.
Bill Reiman, General Manager, said of the soil, "This contains the building blocks of building a plant," said Reiman, holding up the soil. Of the alternative, he said, "This contains none of that."
The experimental growing are a part of the efforts being carried out by the California Strawberry Commission and the California Department of Pesticide Regulation. The aim is to find a successful mixture of material that would enable strawberry growers to give up soil - thus removing the need to use fumigants.
"It's going to eventually go away," Reiman said, speaking of fumigant methyl bromide. Another soil fumigant, methyl iodide, was removed from the U.S. market last week by its manufacturer, Arysta LifeScience Corp.
The biggest obstacle in the way of using soil alternatives is the cost. For 1 acre of plants at Catalinos Berry Farms, the coir-peat mix costs $10,000, said Reiman, and that is on top of regular operating costs. Pesticides are only a "minimal" cost.
This would lead to a tripling of costs at the consumer end of the market - something which is simply not viable, as Reiman explains. "Consumers are still price buyers, so that has to be part of the equation."
So the search is on for an affordable solution. One possibility is a recyclabe mixture.
However, the amount of yield produced also needs to be considered. there are slight visible differentness, as mentioned above, between plants grown in soil and those in the alternatives.Remain said the yield of fruit from the alternaive grown plants was "not even close" to those conventionally grown.
European countries have been using substrates for strawberry cultivation for years now, but as Carolyn O' Donnell, communications director at the commission points out, the production level in Europe "is a fraction of what it is in the US."
In the U.S., 7½ pounds of strawberries are consumed per person a year, with 88 percent of the nation's strawberries grown in California in 2010, she said. In 2011, Oxnard produced 75 percent of the state's strawberries during fall harvests and about 26 percent in winter, spring and summer harvests.
The strawberries are being harvested every two weeks until July, and the farm will start planting them again, Reiman said. The fruit picked Tuesday will be sold in Costco and Whole Foods along with the soil-grown fruit.
Reiman appeared cautiously optimistic about the experiments.
Over time, he said, changes in technology and processes may enable growers to match soil's yields of strawberries.
"We have to push to do something better in terms of quantity, quality and price," Reiman said. "It's all part of the equation."
Source: www.vcstar.com
