Avocado with V-Protect hail system

News

For this issue of our technical column ‘Valente Solutions’ we are once again dealing with our friend Dario de Lisi of Masseria Fruttirossi.

In the previous interview, we talked about pomegranates, but the company, which covers 400 hectares of property, has in recent years decided to venture into the cultivation of a fruit that is rather unusual at these latitudes.

We are talking about a 40-hectare plot of avocados, a crop which is known as exotic and definitely innovative for the Apulian region.

Dario’s company, thanks to the presence of the processing system we saw in the previous video, has the possibility not only to select the fresh fruit intended for sale as it is, but also to allocate a part of the production to the processed product; we can imagine an Apulian guacamole, perhaps with additional ingredients also from the region, or simply a fruit already pitted and peeled ready for consumption, which could be processed with the high-pressure machine we saw earlier.

As for the technical aspects of the system, the entire installation is equipped with the anti-hail covering system to protect the plant against extreme weather conditions, especially hail, but as the avocado is an exotic plant and an evergreen, it is also particularly sensitive to low temperatures and extreme wind, which are mitigated by the nets.

And it is precisely in the nets that we find another peculiarity: they are yellow.

The reason Dario explained to us was that, as they were basically pioneers in this production experience, they relied on what was available in the literature and the testimonials of other producers, including foreign ones, and the information they acquired indicated that the yellow net could induce an improvement in the vegetative and productive phase of the plant.

Furthermore, in addition to the nets that help as described above, the plant was also equipped with an anti-freeze system to handle the problem of low temperatures, because it is true that we are in southern Italy, but statistically during the winter months there are several days, especially during the night hours, where the temperature can drop even below zero.

Another feature of the system is its height: normally, these structures are 4 – 4.5 metres high above ground, whereas here we have created one that is 5 metres high above ground, which allows the plant to reach a height of about 3 metres.

The avocado would grow just like a tree, therefore at much greater heights, but the canopy is managed so as not to exceed that size and thus also facilitating the harvesting operation.

The last point, as always, concerns the reasons why our company was chosen.

These are Dario’s words: “We made a selection among various possibilities and various suppliers and we found in Valente the right answers to our questions, in other words an excellent service, timeliness, professionalism, but also a fair value for money, because when you make investments in this direction, which are therefore intended to last over time, you obviously need to make the right choice.

Thanks again to Dario for his time and for choosing us.

But most of all, we look forward to tasting his Apulian guacamole.

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