As part of our business tour to Italy, together with Russian fruit producers we visited Griba and Salvi Vivai nurseries, saw apple orchards planted according to the Guyot system and experimental cherry plantations, visited research centres for the development of new apple varieties and tasted more than 12 new products. Our delegation was particularly impressed by the production facilities of the co-operatives:
The Melinda cooperative consolidates 4,000 farmers in Italy and produces more than 400,000 tonnes of apples in the Non and Sole Valleys. We visited the orchards and the co-operative's state-of-the-art sorting and packing facility, which consists of 70 water channels and systems for determining the internal and external quality of the fruit. Melinda also has a chain of shops where it sells fresh apples and its processed products. We appreciated the flavour of the entire range.
The Fruit Modena Group cooperative produces 70% of all Italy's pears and their 27,000 tonne pear storage facility is considered the largest and most modern. Of course, we familiarised ourselves with the peculiarities of pear storage as well as the pre-production stages. Did you know that a pear requires faster cooling than an apple? The co-operative loads the chamber by 30% at once and starts it up, this allows them to store, for example, pear of the Abbat variety until June. The temperature regime for pears is -1, -2 degrees.
“Evolution of apple growing, storage, grading and processing technologies. Marketing the apple business.”