Los Angeles, California, USA
April 12, 2010

The 2009-2010 tomato growing season in Sinaloa, Mexico has been one for the record books. A mild climate combined with the best prices ever experienced has made a dramatic back drop for Danson’s Merlot Grape Cherry Tomato. Growers have developed sophisticated nutritional and integrated pest management programs for Merlot. This has enabled them to keep their open field plantings from early September viable, and still producing high yields. As March was ending some of these fields had already produced 210,000 + kilos per hectare of export product. It is apparent that a strong market through the balance of April, 2010 may see some of these fields producing as much as 240,000-250,000 kilos per hectare. Merlot averages approximately 8-9 gr. fruit size providing growers mostly with a predominance of medium sized grape cherries.

Merlot’s enormous yields are due to its flexibility as a very early maturing determinate plant with: heat set tolerance, short internodes, concentrated setting, and continuous setting, plant vigor, and disease resistance. Aggressive nutritional programs can push the plant up as high as two meters while still maintaining short internodes. This has the effect of multiplying yield by increasing the number of internodes and clusters. Merlot can set fruit under extreme heat or in cool temperatures. It is the earliest maturing grape cherry on the market with some fields getting picked as early as 50 days after transplant.

Danson Seed has developed a new generation of determinate and semi determinate grape cherry varieties that are even more productive in protected culture. Merlot and the new varieties are self pruning with sparse foliage. This eliminates the need for costly plant pruning. 20-25% shade stimulates additional plant growth and increases fruit size. This significantly increases yield. Please contact Antonio Gonzalez, Director of Product Development in Mexico to visit our protected culture validation trials at the AgroExpo site in Culiacan, Sinaloa, Mexico. The validation trials will be open through the end of May of 2010.

Please contact Antonio Gonzalez in Mexico at 52 1 66 77 91 6758, or Michael Nadel, in the USA, at 310 838-7675 for further information.

Website: http://www.seedquest.com/id/d/dansonseed.htm

Published: April 13, 2010