As a leading British and international soft fruit producer, we are extremely passionate about underpinning our growing techniques with a significant research and development programme. Through this programme, we are always looking for ways to produce even better fruit that will delight and exceed the expectations of our customers and consumers.
We have invested in state of the art laboratories at our farm in Herefordshire, where we are working in close partnership with the impressive James Hutton Institute. This allows us to research new cultivars that will develop superior fruit quality, flavour and consistency. We also focus on yield quantity and ways in which the harvesting period can be extended. At the heart of our research is the growing environment, managing disease resistance and plant vigour.
We have our own extensive soft fruit cultivar breeding programme where we naturally cross-pollinate from plants with identified desirable characteristics to enable us to select and develop beneficial traits for future exclusive cultivars.
New commercially available cultivars are evaluated for a wide range of characteristics including superior fruit quality, flavour and consistency; yield quantity and extended harvest period; growing environment suitability, disease resistance and plant vigour.