ADAS Soft Fruit Conference

Scott Raffle of ADAS fruit consulting presented some recent trial results at the ‘New Developments in the Soft Fruit Industry’ conference held at Ashford, Kent. His talk was entitled ‘Cropping Joan Squire raspberry under Luminance THB polythene’.

Scott described the work he and his colleagues conducted last summer investigating the effects of BPI Agri’s ‘Luminance THB’ film in comparison with a standard clear film covering a crop of Joan Squire raspberries on a commercial farm. Measurements of average fruit weight, yield per bay and total yield per hectare we taken. The results were highly impressive and clearly demonstrated that plants those grown under ‘Luminance THB’ produced heavier berries (10%), produced a higher average yield per plot (26%).

Scott translated these findings into the potential increase in yield per hectare the grower could gain. This showed that the grower could attain 12.2t/ha using ‘Luminance THB’ but only 9.7t/ha using a standard clear film. Clearly demonstrating that using the new range of technical films from BPI is indeed a prudent choice!


DATE: 29/03/2004