Promising first season for AVA Rosa strawberry

After a late start the Scottish soft fruit season is picking up fast, John Gray from Angus Soft Fruits said that after a great weekend and a few sunny days this week, "The fruit is there and sales are up. The demand is strong, better than expectations. If it continues like this it will be happy days."

The season of course is still behind, what will probably happen is that there will be lot of strawberries on the market late June and July, but this will coincide with Wimbledon when demand is generally at its peak

Angus Soft Fruit sees its first commercial season for the new AVA Rosa strawberry this year, according to Gray the first pick was in May, later than they would have liked but it was very good. "The fruit is large, a glossy deep red colour and has a lovely shape and good sweet taste."

AVA Rosa is the next generation from the company’s AVA programme, with similar characteristics to the UK's first premium variety AVA released in 2003. AVA Rosa has a larger fruit size with a deeper red colour and yields a lot more. Around 400 tons will produced this season from May until October.

The Islay strawberry is also doing well this season, similar to the AVA Rosa it is expected to produce more than 1000 tons of fruit.

Angus Soft Fruit started the domestic raspberry harvest last week and the blackberries will start next week.

For more information:

John Gray
Angus Soft Fruit Ltd.
Tel: +44 1241 879989
j.gray@angussoftfruits.co.uk
www.angussoftfruits.co.uk
www.goodnaturedfruit.co.uk