October 12, 2015
From September 22nd to September 24th , many vegetable professionals from all over the world came to visit the International Open Days held on a big demo field located near Dirkshorn (province of North Holland in The Netherlands). The event was a unique opportunity for them to discover the latest innovations in a complete range of open field vegetable varieties offered by seed companies Hazera and Vilmorin. New in this edition were the dedicated “Theme Days” composed in collaboration with external knowledge partners, on Soil, Market and Taste.
Visitors from 40 countries ranging from Australia to Uzbekistan got familiar with the latest varieties, introductions, trends and technologies in vegetable growing. They actively engaged into exchanges with Hazera’s and Vilmorin’s crop specialists. Highlights in the crops on show were brassicas, including new varieties that combine earliness with storability and new high yielding Brussels sprouts. There were onions with improved disease resistance, firmness, earliness yield and dormancy, carrots featuring long storage, vigour, disease resistances, colour and taste, and several types of lettuce with new disease resistances.
Tuesday four partner companies were present in the pavilion to share their knowledge on the use and monitoring of the soil. Subjects were farming on salty soils (http://saltfarmtexel.com ), the use of drones in agriculture (http://www.aureaimaging.com/ ), crop fertilisation http://blgg.agroxpertus.nl/ ) and soil fertility (http://yara.com/ ) .
On Wednesday the focus was on markets and year round supply in four main vegetable crops: onion (http://www.waterman-onions.nl/en/ ), carrot (http://www.topcarrots.com/en/ ), tomato (www.groentenfruithuis.nl) and watermelon (by Hazera).
Thursday was all about taste, with comparative tasting on tomato, pointed cabbage, carrot and watermelon, and presentations by the Wageningen University Flavour Research Center.
During the whole event the high quality catering was based on the vegetables that were on show.
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