Ernesto Escurra: "Peru's advantage should be in organic blueberries"

Ernesto Escurra: “Peru's advantage should be in organic blueberries”

14/08/2015

ernesto_escurra The manager of the Peruvian fruit factory La Joyita, Ernesto Escurra, is one of the pioneers in the cultivation of blueberries in Peru. Their first 180.000 plants were taken from the nurseries of Paine, in Chile, in the 2009.

In those years he declared to the Peruvian press that "As pioneers in the production of asparagus in Peru, we import from Chile open varieties such as Misty, Legacy and O'neal. We did not use Biloxi because at that time in Chile it was not a recommended variety because there was no history".

He works and has worked on different projects, experimental and commercial, foreign and own, private and state, and with many varieties of plants with substrates, even without them, "before they came to bare root"He tells us.

The project initiated by the fruit company La Joyita, in the town of Huacho, Arequipa, in the 2009 took shape and already in 2013 planted other 10 hectares with varieties with royalty imported from the United States.

"The idea is to make a garden with seven varieties, among them the Biloxi, to try which ones adapt better to the Huacho area, since to date there is no study about it. Once the varieties with the highest yield are selected, more hectares will be added", The engineer Escurra declared in his time.

At the time he pointed out that they expected to obtain yields of around 20 tons per hectare for royalty varieties, double what is obtained with open varieties, such as O'neal, which take between 2 and 3 years.

From his beginnings in the cultivation of blueberries, Ernesto Escurra Sanz pointed to the comparative advantages that Peru could achieve compared to the other countries of the region in the commercial offer of cranberry for international markets.

At the time, he aimed to get two crops from Arequipa's plants, looking for the possibility that Peruvian production would seek to take advantage of two commercial windows, and not only the one that includes the months of September - October.

The possibility of using two windows, adding the months of March-April is installed due to the lack of supply of fruit in the market at those dates. "The plant is going to give two crops. But the issue is whether the fruit is removed for March-April and if this compromises or delays the September-October harvest, which is the most attractive commercial window", Declared at the time.

Blueberrieschile.com spoke with the manager of La Joyita at the Second International Blueberries / AGQ Lab International Seminar held in Lima, Peru, last June and asked him where the Peruvian comparative advantages could be located in relation to the blueberry offer of the other countries of the region.

"From the coasts of Huacho we have seven days less to China, that as the first advantage, and secondly, I believe that the cultivation of organic blueberries is the advantage that Peru should develop to compete in the international market, in which every day grows the demand for this fruit in natural conditions"He finished.