- The Operating Groups Peachnir, Fruit Forecast, PamInCat and Gomori, which share the challenge of improving production in all its aspects, have the support and active participation of the Cooperative Group.
Within its determined commitment to innovation and development, the Fruits de Ponent Cooperative Group is immersed in a series of projects that show this and that come to materialize this line of work, which is shared by other companies in the sector, the IRBLleida and the IRTA.
On the one hand, Fruits de Ponent has acquired an automatic fruit sorting machine from the Peachnir operating group. This device facilitates the classification of fruits of homogeneous quality according to their state of maturity, being able to allocate the more mature fruits to fast or local marketing, and the fruits of greater distance to more distant markets. Criteria based on external appearance attributes are discarded. The scientific and technological sector collaborates in the execution of the project with the participation of IRTA and the manufacturer of sorters Maf Roda Agrobotic, while the Fruits de Ponent Cooperative Group is one of the intervening parties on the part of the producer and marketer sector.
Fruits de Ponent also collaborates with Fruit Forecast, an Operational Group project based on the use of data and Big Data technologies to develop prediction models that anticipate information on the evolution of quality parameters and harvest volumes for the peach and cherry sector. In this way, it is possible to improve the reliability of harvest planning, a critical factor for the competitiveness of fruit producing companies.
In fact, Fruits de Ponent will participate on may 27 in the online technical conference that Fruit Forecast will hold to publicize the project, its progress and explain the advantages of using models to predict the volume of harvest and the quality of the fruit in the stone fruit. It will do so through the intervention of Marc Nart, agronomic director at Fruits de Ponent, who will talk about ‘Fruits de Ponent use case’.
Within this same commitment of Fruits de Ponent for innovation, we must place its participation in the PamInCat-Pam Industrial Catalonia project, which aims to analyze the behavior of different commercial varieties of a set of aromatic and medicinal plant species (PAM) that could be cultivated on a commercial scale in different agricultural settings in Catalonia.
To do this, species that are in good demand in the market are chosen and have been planted in three plots located in Las Garrigues, La Noguera and La Segarra. The partners that are part of this operating group are Grupo Cooperativo Fruits de Ponent, as leader; Aigües del Segarra-Garrigues, Ventós Laboratory and Forest Science and Technology Center of Catalonia. The total budget is € 179,870.00 with funding from DARP and the EU of € 128,963.3 and own funding from Fruits de Ponent and Aigües del Segarra-Garrigues of € 50,906.70.
Finally, Fruits de Ponent also participates in the Gomori project, an Operational Group whose main objective is to control postharvest diseases of peaches and nectarines caused by Monilinia spp. and Rhizopus spp. using strategies that do not leave residues on the fruit at harvest time, in order to be able to access the most demanding markets. The producer and marketing sector collaborate in the execution of the project, through Fruits de Ponent, Agropecuaria and the credit section of Soses SCCL and SAT Fruta de Alcarràs, as well as the scientific and technological sector with the participation of IRTA. The Gomori project is funded through Operation 16:01:01 Cooperation for Innovation of the Rural Development Program of Catalonia 2014-2020.
