The genetics of all the blueberry plants grown in Europe and Africa by Fall Creek are linked to one place: Seville. A privileged enclave of the municipality of Aznalcázar, in the surroundings of the Doñana National Park, is the location of the high-tech greenhouses where the company develops its genetic variety programs and grows the mother plants for its range of blueberries.
"Since the opening of our facilities in Seville eight years ago, we have been backing all of Fall Creek's operations on both continents," says Antonio Álamo, Fall Creek's Operation Manager for EMEA. "Seville's weather, with warm springs and summers and relatively mild winters, allows us to have fast growing cycles and produce high quality, European-certified mother plants.
"These mother plants are the material from which all the commercial production of the Fall Creek nurseries in Spain and the Netherlands starts, and we produce them in vitro, guaranteeing the traceability and certifiability of all our production," says Antonio as we walk past the hermetic greenhouses where the rooting and acclimatization of the propagated plants is carried out.
"Quality is our priority. The delivery of each plant is like delivering hardware with the right software, which is our genetics, so that the customer can get the full potential out of the blueberry crop. And the growth of Fall Creek's sales shows that we are doing a good job."
"In the last eight years, we have done nothing but grow".
"In fact, in the last eight years, since we started up the Aznalcázar facilities, we have done nothing but grow along with an industry that has been growing at a rate of 25%, which has forced us to gradually expand our facilities to meet all the demand we have," says Antonio.
"In my 16 years of experience as a breeder, I have had the good fortune of witnessing the rise of the blueberry sector and of being part of the genetic revolution that has been taking place, especially with the Southern Highbush types. Blueberry is a crop with only 110 years of history (very little, compared to the millennia of orange cultivation) and the first Southern Highbush cross was only made in 1975. In the last 49 years, we have basically gone from not having a low chill blueberry to this being one of the major export products."
"In our different marketing programs we work with varieties such as the Ventura, which we developed years ago in Huelva; a variety with low chill requirements, and Southern Highbush. We took it to Peru at the time when the industry was expanding," says Antonio.
"Our new developments are also achieving great success, including varieties from our Fall Creek Collection program, namely KeplerBlue, OlympusBlue and AzraBlue for Southern Highbush, and ArabellaBlue and LoretoBlue for Northern Highbush, as well as the varieties from the Sekoya program, which is recording very interesting growth. With the varieties from all these programs, we want to give growers the guarantee that they'll be able to find the variety they need, the one that is best suited to the conditions of their growing location and that best fits in with their commercial project," he says.
"We aim to have a world with better blueberries"
In total, more than 10 million plants, grown under strict planning to ensure an optimum stage of development when they are shipped, line the various Fall Creek greenhouses in Seville. And this season, Morocco will be the destination for a large part of them.
"Morocco is strongly expanding its blueberry acreage; in fact, it is currently one of our largest markets. The country has an advantage thanks to the earliness of its production and more than interesting production costs, and the country's expected growth has motivated us to build new facilities in Morocco, which will be operational in 2025. The idea is to be able to provide a closer and faster service to our clients," says Antonio Álamo.
"New plantations also continue to be set up in Europe, although we see that most efforts are currently going into varietal replacement of the existing ones, as is happening in Huelva."
Whether for new farms or to replace already obsolete varieties, "the varieties from our programs are being chosen for all these projects not only in Europe and Africa, but all over the world," says Antonio. "Our mission is clear. We aim to have a world with better blueberries, and we are achieving this through better genetics, exceptional plants and technical support to growers, so that consumers can also have better fruit and enjoy the great privilege of being able to eat blueberries every day of the year."
For more information:
Fall Creek Nursery
Carretera Partido de Resina, km. 2,5
41849 Aznalcázar, Seville, Spain
Tel: +34 954 491 931
https://www.fallcreeknursery.com/es