Pablo Kiger is Driscoll`s Blueberry Quality Manager for South America. The specialist supervises the quality of the fruit that is produced for the world in the export industry of Chile, Peru and Colombia. We talked with him about the recurring and variable issue of the quality of the fruit and the standards to be respected to achieve it.

According to you and according to your standards, what is quality?

When we talk about quality in the fruit we have several definitions, but the one I like the most is when it comes to the degree of excellence. That is what the literature says and it adjusts to what one wants as a professional regarding quality. Have a fruit of excellence. Which means that it can reach distant markets, and increasingly distant, since the distances are the same but the times have increased in the containers, in the ships, towards China and the United States as well. To Europe they have been more stable.

So, arriving well, already with a fruit harvested, many times carbonated, many times brominated, and moreover add 25, 30, 40, and up to 55 days, and arrive well, that is a degree of excellence.

In your experience, are there different concepts of quality according to different consumer cultures?

More than different, different attributes are appreciated, for example, the Chinese consumer likes large, crisp and very blue fruit, actually everyone. But the North American consumer does not pay much attention to size, but it should still be firm, crisp and blue. The European consumer is very similar to the Chinese, but the one that stands out the most in this transversality of what they want is the Chinese market, which requires large fruit, sometimes 14, 16 millimeters, very blue, much bloom and also crisp. Everything is included there.

Have quality standards been changing or increasing?

They have been changing and they have been increasing, because the consumer is no longer satisfied with what the industry offered, regardless of the country, 10, 15, or 20 years ago. Now a premium quality product that lasts, beautiful, rich, tasty, sweet, not very acidic, very blue and with plenty of bloom and size encompasses everything. This is increasing and I believe that the quality requirement will rise further.

Is quality related to variety?

Yes of course. There are varieties that are characterized by being a little dehydrated, others semi-hard, others not very large, there are some that do not even travel very well and soften very quickly. There are new varieties that have the characteristic of being very traveling, they last a long time, they are large, have bloom and are uniform in the characteristics that are desired. There are very attractive varieties on the market.

In this perspective, do you think that blueberries identified according to the variety should be sold in the immediate future, like other fruits?

Yes, it is sold in varietal form, because that indication must appear on the label of the box. However, it could become that the market leans for varieties and that these are always in demand, regardless of the country that produces them. It could be that the communications of the business unit detect that a variety does not like much here or here, they do not like it very much in China or the US, and it begins to have a reputation. Besides, they rank the varieties too, so why not? In the future, blueberries can be sold by variety.

Based on your experience in quality, do hydroponic systems have advantages or disadvantages in this regard?

I love potted crops, also called hydroponics, because the plant is individualized in a pot or bag and it is almost given the nutrients it wants, the watering it wants, and some type of disease pathologies are controlled very well. Soil, which is practically non-existent in pots, and is contributed to the crop at the rate of what the plants want, neither more nor less, which produces savings for the producer. No more watering, no more nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, or micro and macro nutrients, but just what you need based on foliar analysis and analysis of the blueberry crop. As well as the use of mesh and covers to avoid radiation or damage from birds, frost or hail. All of this is essential to achieve quality fruit, among other things.