More On Proprietary Variety Management

More On Proprietary Variety Management. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

Yesterday we began a talk with Alan Taylor, marketing director for the new company, Proprietary Variety Management. In days gone by there were really only a few apple varieties available but today there are many different ones to choose from for not only eating but growing and Taylor talks about that.

TAYLOR: I think we’re going to be seeing more of the direction that a number of varieties are heading toward. There are a number of large shippers are also involved in that they have their own proprietary varieties, their won trademark varieties and I know that that pretty much started with the Pink Lady apple that we were involved in and now they are out looking for apples that they can do the same thing with.

Taylor says he thinks that this is very healthy for the industry.

TAYLOR: It means that there are going to be a lot more choices available out there for the grower when they want to put in a new orchard block. This particular business is going to take probably a number of years before some of these things really do get to the supermarket. We kind of kid around sometimes about working for our grandchildren when you are working in fruit varieties because it does take some time for that to happen.

But he does say that there are some varieties that they have been looking at for some time.

TAYLOR: We can introduce those to the growers quite soon and they can make their decisions and start planting before we have to worry about providing things for our grandchildren. We can actually provide some for the consumers that are out there today.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.