121 kg yield by implementing the Plant Empowerment philosophy

BASF Vegetable Seeds focuses on what the company calls 'integrated breeding' - combining the knowledge of plant breeders with state-of-the-art technology and emerging science. The company's goal is not just to sell seeds, but to provide its customers and the entire chain with innovation, expert advice and knowledge, reliable varieties, profitable concepts and sustainable solutions. Together with Hoogendoorn Growth Management, one of the Plant Empowerment Implementation Partners, they previously conducted a trial with hydroponic lettuce at our Nunhems location in 's-Gravenzande, the Netherlands, based on autonomous and data-driven growing. The results were so impressive that they decided to try it for tomatoes as well. That's where the other Plant Empowerment Implementation Partners came in. So in October 2019, BASF and all the partners set up a GPE trial on about 500m2."

In the first year of this project, which started in August 2019, the seed company focused mainly on building its dataset on crop performance as a basis for decision-making. In the 2020/2021 season, BASF tested the Plant Empowerment principles in practice using the Provine truss tomato variety. At the end of that season, analysis of production data showed that the strategy had produced a total yield of 121 kg per m2, which is almost 40% higher than normal.

The Plant Empowerment Implementation Partners recently helped BASF get the 2021/2022 season started. This time, the Plant Empowerment philosophy is being tested on a different variety: truss cherry tomato Adorion. BASF plans to use all the data to develop a reproducible growing strategy that it can offer to every customer who buys Adorion seeds. This will enable those growers to get the best out of this variety - and hopefully other varieties in the future.

Source: HortiBiz