Strawberries are globally considered one of the most dynamic economic crops, with China and US ranked first in the world. On a European scale, some of the countries which dominate are Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, UK and Greece.

 

In Greece, the main Strawberry area is the province of Ilia (South-Western Greece), with more than 1500 semi-covered hectares and other less important regions following such as Aitoloakarnania, Thessaly and Crete.

 

Due to the large crop cycle and the sensitivity of the crop to diseases and pests, many pesticide applications are needed, resulting in a chemical – residue contaminated product with a low competitive value. Western European markets have enormous potential for the Greek growers, but they are also highly demanding in terms of product quality and the low pesticide residues. Especially, large supermarket chains demand quite low number of Active Ingredients to be used in each crop season but are also stricter than the EU standards with reference to MRL’s.

 

For this reason, Anthesis has invested in Integrated Plant Protection programs for strawberry crop, emphasizing on the combination of all available protective methods such as cultural methods, biological insecticides/fungicides, monitoring and trapping and beneficial macro/micro- organisms .Special attention is given to the release of predatory mites such as P. persimilis (Phytoline) against spider mites and A. cucumeris (Amblyline) against thrips. The technical team of Anthesis conducts a lot of field visits to monitor the population of beneficials and evaluate the progress of IPM program.

 

Overall, the main purpose is to reduce/minimize the residues in order to qualitatively and quantitatively upgrade the produce in accordance with Western European standards.