Soft fruit plant propagator Hargreaves Plants has announced plans to relocate and expand its soft fruit trials.

Hargreaves was the first major non-breeding soft fruit plant propagator to establish its own trials three years ago. In the summer of 2001 its initial trial site was the subject of what was alleged to be malicious damage. The entire site was a wipe out and no results were taken. Hargreaves states that this has enabled a rethink of protocols and facilitated a move to a better location on the Norfolk/Lincolnshire border.

Chief executive Paul Taylor said: 'We are very excited about working with a range of world class breeders and bringing their material into our comprehensive trialling regime. It is our aim to present our customers with solid technical information to help them with their production planning. We have the new location and new material but have yet to identify a new manager to spearhead this work.' Since parting company with Meiosis last year, Hargreaves claims it has now accessed exclusive material from eight key breeding sources covering strawberries, raspberries and other cane and bush fruit.

The company's latest trialling plan is to take in unlimited quantities of new material for observations. Interesting lines will then go into replicated trials using established market leaders as controls. Characteristics such as fruit quality, marketable yield, disease resistance and maturity will be recorded on a scale of one to nine, enabling fruit growers, advisors and retailers to clearly understand the results.

Hargreaves expects to use its involvement with the Soft Fruit Technology Department at Reading University to do simultaneous agronomy work on the most promising lines. This is intended to cover basic nutrition work, and to highlight other forms of variety manipulation. It is examining results of nitrogen doses and the varying effect of cold units at Reading.

Ultimately, Hargreaves expects to operate on three UK sites and to establish trials abroad.