The trial is being conducted to achieve a proof of concept for greater yield with BVT’s natural precision agriculture system
Bee Vectoring Technologies International Inc. has announced the Company’s first US demonstration trial on stone fruit, with a conventional cherry grower in Washington. The trial began during the mid-April bloom period and will continue through summer harvest.
The United States is the world’s second-largest cherry producer, second only to Turkey, (1) with cherries representing the most acreage of all stone fruits. There are an estimated 85,000 acres of sweet cherries in the US, (2) with Washington, California and Oregon growing almost 90 per cent of the country’s total yield. There are an additional 32,000 acres of tart cherries grown in the US, of which 75 per cent are in Michigan. (3)
“This initial stone fruit trial marks BVT’s entry into the important US stone fruit market,” said Ashish Malik, CEO of BVT. “In addition to cherries, stone fruits include peaches, nectarines, plums, prunes, and apricots, all grown on more than 270,000 acres(4) of farmland in the US. This is a very attractive crop grouping for BVT because of their high use of paid pollination hives, with over 75% of cherry acres (5) using pollination services.”
The trial is being conducted to achieve a proof of concept for greater yield with BVT’s natural precision agriculture system. It uses BVT’s proprietary Vectorite™ with CR-7 (Clonostachys rosea CR-7) biological fungicide, applied through the process of bee vectoring directly onto cherry blooms.
“Pollination is a vital element of stone fruit production,” said Ian Collinson, Sales Manager at BVT “When a cherry grows, it’s because a bee pollinated a flower. So why not have those bees do double duty and carry biological products for disease control and plant health to those flowers at the same time?”
Now that the bloom period is over, the crop is developing on the trees. Yield data will be available once crops are harvested in late spring and into summer.
