Australian greenhouse grower Edison have just started to harvest their new summer crop of Tomberries. The Tomberry is billed as the world’s smallest ‘big’ tomato. Based in Victoria, Edison also grows the Piccolo cherry tomato and the Tinkerbell mini capsicum.
“This is our summer crop which will run until June 2022,” explains co-founder Ben Meadows. “We will plant our winter crop in December, the season will overlap to ensure we can supply our customers with Tomberry 52 weeks of the year.
“This is our third year with Tomberry. Last year was our first season at scale. We had very good results in the glasshouse and strong take up from customers which is why we have tripled our production. We expect to produce 80,000 punnets of Tomberry each week this summer.
“We are testing the new Tomberry colour range this season with Pink, Chocolate and Orange colours to hopefully join our Red and Yellow Tomberries later next year.”
Tomberry is the world’s smallest tomato so, Ben explains, you can expect growing it to be very challenging.
“Each bunch can have 150 to 250 individual berries. After many years of trial and development we have introduced autonomous pollination to efficiently reach each tiny flower. We have developed automation for the picking of the tiny fruits and we have adapted optical sorting machines from blueberries to work with Tomberries to ensure each tiny fruit meets our customers strict quality specification.”
Tomberry Tomatoes are mainly sold in Supermarkets and independent grocers across Australia.
“Being such a unique product Tomberry has been a hit with the restaurant trade and we have seen strong growth in food service. We also supply a number of export markets, with sales to Singapore taking off last season.”
For more information:
Ben meadows
Edison
Tel: +61 488 111 160
[email protected]
www.edison.net.au