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Independent cultivar evaluation gives growers peace of mind
Over the eight years between 2011 to 2019, more than 830 peach varieties were imported into South Africa, with apples not far behind at 782 new varieties (
right: Provar evaluation of new peach varieties).
The number of cultivars imported every year is astonishing, says Iwan Labuschagne, founder and managing director of Provar, South Africa’s only independent cultivar evaluator.
Most of these varieties will never enter commercial production, but those that do are backed by a strong marketing budget.
It still happens that cultivars and rootstocks are introduced into commercial production without sufficient evaluation data, he says, and should that cultivar underperform under the particular local conditions – as recently happened with a new apple cultivar which is already being removed due to internal problems developing during storage – the financial consequences are severe and results in negative exposure of the l