“Focus in Spain on lettuce, courgettes and small tomatoes”

In the Netherlands, we mostly know Gautier Semillas from the exclusive flavour tomato, which has Piccolo as its showpiece. Yet the breeding station has a much more extensive product portfolio. During the Fruit Attraction, Angelo Tjhie, country manager España, showed promising strains for the Spanish market.

“In Spain, Gautier is mostly known for its types of lettuce. For example, with our little gem varieties Derby, Senna and Pirana, we are well-represented, as we also are with the red oak leaf lettuce, Camarde and the butter lettuce, Pomery,” Tjhie says. According to him, the Spanish lettuce area is fairly stable, and its main share is iceberg lettuce, romaine lettuce and little gem strains.

Gautier is also well-represented in courgettes. “We are the company with the most diversity in colour and shape,” Tjhie proudly says. “We have both round and long courgettes available, in a green, yellow and light green variety, both for greenhouse and outdoor cultivation. A remarkable one is the Amalthée, which for years has been a market leader in the Sevilla/Cádiz region, where this light green variety is preferred over the dark green one.”

The breeding station is mostly active in the smaller segment, regarding tomatoes. “We also offer great diversity in colour in tomatoes, we have red, yellow and orange snack tomatoes. The Piccolo, which does very well elsewhere in Europe, is much harder to cultivate in Southern Europe, climate-wise,” Tjhie says. “And of course we cannot forget the Charentais melon, a typically French product that we are strong in, with strains Alasco and Jenga, in the early and late segment, respectively.”

“In Spain, we work with a fairly small team, consisting of seven people. Our head office is in Agualdulce, Almeria. We do not have our own breeding station, but rent from cultivators at their company. The benefit of that is that we can select the best locations per crop,” Tjhie concludes.