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“How fast can we get new product out the door to help these guys make money in those very expensive operations?” asks Davis. “A variety that won’t work in the field might work in the warehouse, so it’s very interesting to see some of our success with varieties we passed up in the past because they lacked disease-resistance, but they work great in these indoor spaces.”
“It’s refreshing to get a new look at it, and it’s exciting to work with these new tech- nologies and look at food from a different angle.”
Technological changes coupled with labor cost pressures are prompting changes in production, leading to a major shift toward mechanically harvested cabbage.
“Before, you’d grow cabbage flat on the ground,” says Davis. “Now there’s a little stalk that’s like a lollypop almost that comes up so the machine can harvest it.”
Although a breeder can take issues such as this into account, the situation is more challenging if the production systems aren’t there to support it, thus reinforcing the importance of collaboration.
Take Kalettes for example – a hybrid brand of kale sprouts from Europe where the crop is
This winter hardy variety of kalette from Tozer Seeds makes it a year-round item.
mostly machine-harvested.
“You can do the same mechanical harvest
here in the United States, but Brussels sprouts growers here have modified their equipment just simply for Brussels sprouts,” says Kraig Kuykendall, sales manager at Tozer Seeds America, LLC in Santa Maria, CA. “So you’ve got to weigh the cost of hand-harvesting some of these products like Kalettes, and
that changes the whole perspective of prof- itability.”
In addition, United Kingdom consumers accept Kalettes as a seasonal item, but that just wouldn’t fly in the U.S. market.
“Here in the United States, you can’t have anything else on the shelf if it’s not 365 days a year,” Kuykendall says. “You have to go up and down latitudes [for production] to make
PHOTOS COURTESY OF TOZER SEEDS
32 / MAY 2019 / PRODUCE BUSINESS