Jamie Petchell

Looking back on Tropical Blue field visits in southern Spain

As we look back on the early part of the season, one of the most valuable trips for me was a series of field visits in Huelva, southern Spain, focused on commercial plantings of Tropical Blue.

Together with my colleague Soufiane, who is based in Spain and works closely with our grower partners in the region, I spent several days visiting production blocks across multiple sites.

As ever, time in the field — walking the rows and talking directly with growers — provides insights that can’t be replicated elsewhere.

What stood out most clearly was the consistency of performance. Across both substrate and soil-based systems, Tropical Blue continues to demonstrate exceptionally early seasonality combined with strong precocity, delivering appreciable early yields from plantings now in their first, second and third harvests.

These results are being seen repeatedly in full commercial production, not just in isolated trials.

Fruit quality was also a recurring theme, with growers highlighting attractive berries, excellent firmness and shelf-life — all critical for early-season programmes.

One particularly interesting focus during our visits was the use of late-summer “pinching” pruning, typically carried out in August in Huelva. Where applied thoughtfully, this technique is helping to create a more concentrated ripening window, reducing the number of harvest passes per plant. In practical terms, this is translating into improved picking efficiency and lower overall harvesting costs.

Spending time in the field with Soufiane was especially valuable. His close engagement with growers brings important local insight, and many of our discussions reinforced the need to align variety choice with real-world agronomy and operational realities.

Looking back, these visits confirmed that success in early production is not just about timing, but about combining earliness, consistency, fruit quality and efficiency — areas where Tropical Blue continues to perform strongly.