Bud to Box with Valent-Pace Pt 2
With today's Fruit Grower Report, I'm Bob Larson. We talked yesterday about the "Bud to Box" program Valent USA and Pace International have to help tree fruit at every step of production.
Pace Vice President Rodrigo Cifuentes says integrations is the key to success ...
CIFUENTES ... "A lot of the post-harvest qualities they find in the field. So, a lot of the products that Valent USA sells, whether they're insecticides or PGRs, to effect post-harvest qualities so we're in a unique position to integrate what is done pre-harvest, also with the post-harvest products to maximize the quality of the fruit."
Valent's Mark Mason says these are exciting times ...
MASON ... "Yes, absolutely! We are just at the beginning of creating these solutions as we just begin to integrate the whole concept, but it is exciting to be able to impact that quality and the customers all the way through to help them be successful."
Cifuentes says best of all, it's sustainable ...
CIFUENTES ... "Valent and Pace have a unique portfolio of sustainable solutions. So, it's one of the concepts that we've been working as a group of companies, of bringing up and creating more awareness of all the sustainable solutions that we have both pre and post-harvest which no other company has."
And, Cifuentes says, it's just the beginning ...
CIFUENTES ... "No, we'll continue to develop this program to bring it to more customers. We're thinking of new things we want to introduce in the future to have more people be able to use the products from both Valent and Pace."
Contact your local Valent or Pace representative for more on the "Bud to Box" program.
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BL: Welcome back to another "Fruit Bites" brought to you by Valent U.S.A. With us again is Valent's Allison Walston. And this week Allison, tell me what are PGRs?
AW: PGRs are plant growth regulators or plant hormones. In agriculture, we can apply these plant hormones to manipulate the plant to grow or not grow specific ways.
BL: Oh yes, something like rooting hormone!
AW: Yes, another example is 6-benzyladenine, or 6-BA, a product called MaxCel. When growers plant whips, or small trees, they might not want to make scoring or notch marks to induce branching.
BL: Yes, early season, those wounds could lead to fungal infections.
AW: And some types of trees just like to grow straight up without branching. So we can use a PGR to encourage the tree to push out new shoots, which then leads to fruiting wood and fruit. We have been researching new ways to use 6-BA and other PGRs to increase feathers (what the tree nursery people call branches).
BL: Well, thanks Allison. Join us again next time for Fruit Bites, brought to you by Valent. Until then, I'm Bob Larson.
