The Valencian company ValGenetics, laboratory of vegetal health authorized by the Generalitat and located in the University of Valencia Science Park, will produce this year more than 900 strawberry mother plants, of 40 different varieties, for the producers of Huelva.
"These new plants, free of the viruses and pathogenic elements required by the regulations, will be delivered in April. Firstly, they will be transplanted in the high-altitude nurseries of Castilla-León, where the cold favors the propagation and induces future flowering. After more than a year, they will be transplanted in the flat lands of Huelva, where high temperatures favor fruiting. It is a process of more than two years. In this period of time each of the mother plants that we have delivered will derive at a minimum of 200,000 new plants, from which will come the strawberries that we will eat in 2021", explains the CEO of ValGenetics, Maria R. Albiach.
The cultivation of strawberries is regulated by the Technical Regulation of Control and Certification of Nursery Plants of Fruit Trees (Real Decreto 929/95 of June 9, 1995), which establishes the regulations for the control of the production of strawberry plants and its certification process. "We have already started the sanitation of raspberry and blackberry, and shortly we will start the cleaning of blueberries", announced the head of the area of Plant Biotechnology, Magdalena Cervera.
ValGenetics is a biotechnology company specializing in R+D+i development and on-demand services for pathological diagnosis, plant genetics and in vitro cultivation, aimed at the national and international agricultural sector, both in the private and public sectors. Recently it has been recognized with the NEOTEC project of the Centro de Desarrollo Tecnológico Industrial (CDTI) to put the diagnosis and production methodology of mother plants in red fruits at the service of the sector.