Best Of Both Worlds At PMA’s Fresh Summit

If you’ve never attended the Produce Marketing Association’s Fresh Summit Convention and Exposition, then you’re missing out on a pretty overwhelming experience. I found myself in that situation last month when I made my first trip to PMA, which took place in Houston this year.

There are a few educational sessions at the show, and this year most of them revolved around food safety, certainly a hot-button issue today. However, the highlight is the trade show, a massive maze of exhibitors spotlighting the latest innovations in packaging, promotional opportunities, and marketing programs.

Of course, it all ties back to growing the right crops. As I visited some of the seed companies who had booths on the trade show floor, I was struck by what seemed to be a renewed effort to develop varieties with quality traits that consumers are looking for. This sounds like a step in the right direction.

Evolution In Priorities

Being relatively new to the vegetable side of the produce industry, I was looking for information on the process seed companies follow in creating new varieties. A few of the companies I talked to told me that for many years, the focus was on disease resistance, high yields, and other factors that are important to vegetable growers. While these criteria are no less important today, it was evident that the breeders recognized that today’s varieties must be acceptable to both the grower and the end user: the consumer. Because of this, considerations such as appearance, shelflife, and most importantly, taste, have become just as important.

The ideal goal should be to bring all of these traits together, creating a product that both growers and consumers can appreciate. This ties back to a couple aspects of American Vegetable Grower’s SEED Initiative: the importance of engaging the consumer, and the commitment to delivering a high-quality crop. Growers and consumers might have slightly different definitions of how they define “quality” — for the grower, quality means a plant that is easy to grow without any big headaches, while for the consumer, quality means a food that is appealing enough to make them want to keep buying it. By working to incorporate all of these quality traits into one variety, seed companies can create a win-win situation for everyone involved.

Several pages of this issue highlight the work seed companies are putting into this process. Our extensive Variety Showcase is a guide to the latest vegetables coming onto the market. Take a look at some of them, and you’ll see words like “outstanding flavor and eating quality” and “excellent root strength and cracking resistance” in the same description.

In addition to that, our coverage of this past summer’s seed trials is also a reflection of this trend. Sure, you can read about peppers with high yields and upright growth habits. But at the same time, as one individual noted, “We are breeding for the consumer first. If we’re not breeding for the consumer, we’re wasting time.”

Part of it comes down to taking a chance. As a grower, you need to be able to take the next step and ask yourself, “This variety meets my needs, but does it also meet the needs of my customers?” I took a chance recently and am hoping it will pay off. I’m sure taking this chance will pay off for you as well, as long as you work with both ends of the chain — the seed developer and the consumer.