Coag detects a 30% increase in grafts with native and mid-season varieties
The implementation of the protected geographical identity (PGI) Peach of Cieza, promoted by the Autonomous Community and the City Council, has caused the producers of the Vega Alta to give the yellow peach a new opportunity. During these days, farmers proceed to graft trees that are already five or six years old, “and we have detected an increase of 15% in obtaining the two cataloged varieties, ‘Baby Gold 6’ and ‘Romea'”, highlighted the president of Coag Rural Initiative in Cieza, Miguel Ángel Piñera. He explained that, globally, in the Vega Alta fields, this year 30% of the production will be renewed through grafting.
Over the last two decades, producers have been adapting their crops to the demands of a market, the European market, which calls for extra-early, red-fleshed fruit, generally marketed between the months of May and June. These varieties are generally more acidic and with few sugars, quite the opposite of what is achieved with the pieces whose maturation process is longer.
“We believe that the PGI is going to give Ciezana varieties support so that the markets will once again demand it, putting quality before earliness,” Piñera said. She also stressed that this distinction “is not going to mean at all that the farmer from Cieza does not continue to cultivate and market early varieties to continue competing in Europe.”
“Next spring, the sprouts will already be of the species we want to obtain,” explains Juan Luis Piñera
The agrarian leader also recalled that, after many years of negotiation, “the farmers of Cieza have reached agreements with the breeders, so that all the plantations are adjusted to the royalties in force.”
a physical process
Grafting is normally carried out at this time of year, coinciding with the vital paralysis of the trees. “The last sages that circulate through the branches are used to rethink the entire specimen,” Juan Luis Piñera Ballesteros, a young producer who these days is proceeding to graft some 1,300 units that have been provided to him over the last six years, explained to LA VERDAD Paraguayan harvests and that, from now on, will be ‘Baby Gold 6’. “You have to wait between two and three years to obtain the first results, since the grafts are undertaken once the tree has been mutilated, and we must wait for the new branches to emerge in about two seasons,” explained the young harvester.
“It is a totally physical process, since once we compact the old branch with the new variety, the sap begins to flow, being ready next spring so that the new shoots are already of the species we want to obtain,” Ballesteros said.
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