Last month one of the world’s leading horticulture research bodies HortResearch New Zealand entered into an important international partnership with Spanish agri-food institute Irta.
Under the terms of the partnership, HortResearch and the Barcelona-based group will set up international programmes for the development of new fruit cultivars and look at developing advanced, integrated and sustainable production systems, suitable for commercial application. While HortResearch can lay claim to Zespri Gold and Jazz in the kiwifruit and top-fruit arenas, Irta’s claims to variety fame are Arbequina olives and Francoli almonds.
“HortResearch and Irta both have substantial programmes of underpinning research in disease management, fruit and crop quality and plant genetics,” says Irta’s Agustí Fonts. “When combined, these create exciting new and differentiated value-added products. The agreement is very significant as it means we are embarking on a great adventure -genetic improvement of apple and pear varieties. Without the contribution of HortResearch, Irta alone would not have been able to satisfy this demand in Spain, and more specifically in Catalonia. Here there is a clear demand among producers to be able to bring to market varieties of fruit that satisfy consumer requirements in terms of quality, taste characteristics and sustainable production methods.”
At HortResearch New Zealand, Michael Lay-Yee, international director general is convinced that such relationships are the way of the future. “Collaborations such as these are crucial to the pathway forward,” he says. “We have also got collaborations in Asia and the US, for example, and we are continuing to build and develop new ones. We have synergies with Irta and there are many things about the two organisations that are complementary. For example their stone-fruit mapping complements our skills in genomics and functional genomics.” But the objective of this collaboration in the first instance is to develop top-fruit varieties for a hot and dry climate.
Irta also has other international collaborative agreements for the development of other products. For example an agreement with the University of California focuses on the development and application of molecular biology techniques so that Irta is in a position to offer a more competitive service to those companies that are dedicated to variety improvement. “We also have agreements with our opposite numbers in Argentina - with Inta - and in Uruguay - with Inia,” explains Fonts. “These projects are on integrated pest control, or better management of bovine herds, for example, all with a view to offering a product that is better adapted to the requirements of European consumers.”
Irta is now considering branching out its international partnerships in view of the successful collaboration with HortResearch that had been on going even before the deal was signed to work on stonefruit - particularly peaches and nectarines.
HortResearch’s collaborations extend to plant-breeding of top-fruit with Inra in France, plant bio-technology with the Plant Research Institute in the Netherlands and plant genomics and bio-informatics with organisations in Germany; as well as projects with Cornell University and on stonefruit with the University of California, and a red variety of pear with institutes in Yunnan province in China. “By working together we can pull together the world’s best teams to address very complex problems,” says Lay-Yee.
But with so much international work going on transcending boundaries, how do growers in individual countries gain any point of difference on their competitors? “Working collaboratively we can develop generic approaches to problems and bring those back and customise them to our own markets,” explains Lay-Yee. “For example, developing sustainable production for apples, but then these solutions will have to be customised to particular markets to be effective and that way we can give our own industry competitive advantage.”
Warwick HRI is a devolved department of the university of Warwick and was formed two years ago when Horticulture Research International’s sites in Wellesbourne and Kirton were integrated with the University of Warwick. It is the principal UK organisation charged with carrying out horticulture R&D and transferring its results to industry. According to its director Professor Simon Bright, international networking among scientists has an unquantifiable value in horticulture. “We have at least 12 different nationalities from all over the world here,” says Bright. “There is nothing like the experience of working abroad, and keeping up that interaction once scientists return to their home countries is an important part of science - the individual scientist-to-scientist network. It is crucial to be part of the academic network and to be there to help shape the research agenda.”
At Warwick HRI multi-disciplinary teams of world-class scientists work on more than 240ha across two sites on horticulture and crops systems, environment and ecology, plant science, microbial sciences and mathematical biology, biometrics, genomics and bioinformatics. In this way HRI scientists have been in a position to review equivalent programmes in Israel, New Zealand, the US and Belgium. And one HRI scientist is involved in an international project to sequence the tomato genome.
Bright believes that while research at an academic level around pure science such as disease resistance is very much international, this is less true in applied and strategic areas. “Government research and development programmes in Europe tend to be less international than many of the companies operating in the arena,” says Bright. “For example, Defra has more of a UK focus and as a result provision in this area has lagged behind the internationalisation of the marketplace.” Nevertheless Warwick HRI does have a number of collaborative projects in East and West Africa, in India and China and with the US. “A big chunk of that is aimed at monitoring and controlling pest and disease and looking at how that has an impact on production and end-product quality,” says Bright.
Warwick HRI is also part of the European Plant Science Organisation and works on several projects funded by EU collaborative grants to the benefit of a number of member states. The UK research body also has one of two gene banks for brassica vegetables within the EU.
While such harmonious cross-border research may be the buzz of the moment, it has not always been a feature of the horticulture landscape. Changes in the last 10 years have been “brutal” according to Fonts. “In Spain, for a number of reasons, we have been slow to adapt to the changes,” he says. “These have come about largely because of the deep-seated revolution of a market in which producers set the trends to one in which it is the consumer and the commercial structures closest to the consumer that call the tune.”
And according to Lay-Yee, the last five to six years have seen an acceleration of this. “Being more international means we can make faster breakthroughs,” he explains.
The main difference is that research priorities were focused on producers’ needs -yields, disease resistance or aptitude for mechanisation. Now it is quality, storage capability in post-harvest, shelf-life and the feeling of well-being in consumers that lead.
Fonts is convinced that it is the health-kick and consumer well-being that have been the market drivers in the research ambit and that they will continue to dominate over the next decade. “Once basic needs have been addressed and production is no longer a limiting factor, other factors come into play,” he explains. “And the centre of gravity in the food chain from plough to plate is swinging gradually towards the consumer.” The part of the major multiples is also significant as they have assumed a predominant role when it comes to defining the conditions of products they will sell.
Over the next decade, scientific priorities are likely to be geared towards a greater understanding of the role that different components of fruit play in well-being and human health. There is also a lot of work to be done on the application and development of molecular techniques so that they can be applied in selection programmes and in improvement of varieties of commercial interest thus significantly reducing the time taken with regard to traditional selection techniques. “In this same field I believe there is a host of opportunities yet to be fully exploited when it comes to the introduction of specific desired characteristics in varieties that have been improved by traditional means without the resulting variety being a genetically modified organism,” says Fonts.
Another priority at HortResearch is investigation into fruit-based functional foods. And Lay-Yee believes that the drive for greater convenience in fresh produce will be a key impetus in research too.
Limited availability of water and other inputs are also likely to be factors driving research priorities in the future so that systems that optimise use of these resources and enable growers to produce varieties in a sustainable manner while respecting the environment will be a priority for large parts of the producing world.
There is also greater convergence between the different disciplines of science and Lay-Yee believes that there will be a growing focus on the impact of global climate change on food supply and the possibility of some products being grown in areas where it was previously not possible.
Another area for future development is the use of digital and computer technology in forecasting pest and disease incidence so helping to reduce the amount of applications.
And at HortResearch, there is scope to develop its acclaimed bio-sensor technology RipeSense into other areas.
But whichever pathways the scientists’ priorities take them along, horticulture R&D is only likely to get more international, not less.
SELLING FRESHNESS
In the first of a series of bi-monthly columns on research and development, Roger Harker from New Zealand's HortResearch looks at consumer behaviour.
A consumer walks into a produce department and looks around. As well as offering some important components of everyday meals, the retailer is providing some important emotional support.
Consumers visit the produce section because they want fresh, healthy food for themselves and their family. With every purchase, they exhibit the positive behaviour of being good parents and sensible providers.
As a scientist employed by a horticultural research company, I am often surprised that insights into consumer behaviour, available in academic literature, fail to reach the produce industry. In this column, I will pass on some of this information about consumers’ choice of fruit and vegetables, and how it is based on their beliefs, attitudes, perceptions, and preferences.
My interest in consumer research was stimulated by a series of elegant experiments. A colleague, Dr Sara Jaeger, interviewed 40 UK housewives. The women were allowed to choose one out of seven cultivars of apple, and were then asked why they selected that particular apple.
After each answer, Sara again asked “Why?” Consumers started by saying they chose the apple because of its colour, or because they thought it would taste sweet. With more questioning, they responded that fruit was good for their children, and provided important nutrients and vitamins.
Eventually over 80 per cent indicated that they chose the apple because it was good for their family’s health and contributed to living a long and healthy life. In this way a means-end chain was constructed, in which consumers started with the physical attributes of fruit, progressed to the consequences of eating fruit and eventually, to the extent it contributed to their values as individuals and as parents.
Of course, consumers involved in overt experiments can sometimes anticipate the answers scientists expect and respond in a way that is biased towards more socially desirable and prestigious behaviour, although they may behave differently in real life.
One study circumvented this type of artificial behaviour by having consumers visit a taste-testing facility, where they were asked to fill in a series of short questionnaires. One questionnaire provided a measure of consumer awareness of health issues; another measured their craving for sweet foods and the extent that they used food as a reward.
The scientist then thanked them for attending and offered a reward - this was when the experiment actually started - when the consumers were relaxed and off their guard. In the room were a bowl of chocolate bars and a bowl of apples. Consumers were allowed to take one item. Consumers with high scores for health awareness tended to take apples, while those with high scores for craving for sweet foods chose the chocolate bars.
The results from these studies are a microcosm of what happens every day. Consumers face the torment of balancing the wish to live a healthy lifestyle against the primordial drive to eat sweet and fatty foods. On the side of the fruit industry are the consumers’ perceptions that fruit is natural, healthy and juicy. Indeed, many horticultural industries are investing heavily in collecting science-based evidence of the health properties of their particular crop. Yet some pundits suggest that in the end consumers may perceive all types of produce to be equally healthy.
This bi-monthly column will explore the role of the consumer mega-trends of increasing health, convenience and pleasure, along with the everyday pragmatic factors of price, supply-demand and consumers’ perceptions of value.
Above all, we will consider the unique features of produce and how these impact on consumers’ perceptions of quality: the importance of freshness and taste on consumers’ perception of value; the tyranny imposed by the high level of biological variability in our produce; and how this influences quality.
Are consumers more forgiving of variability in a natural product than they would be for a manufactured food? How does the way humans remember experiences influence their ability to make judgements of quality? Are we facing a period in which there is a spiral of increasing expectations of the quality of produce?
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