Each spring, the Netherlands hosts the Dutch Spring Trials, also known as the Pack Trials, in which seven plant breeders open their facilities to share trial results with customers. Visitors come primarily from other European countries, though growers and buyers from Asia and North America also attend, with spring-flowering varieties being a particular draw.
© Mirthe Walpot | FloralDaily.com
Clockwise: Team ABZ Seeds, Ties Klapwijk and Francesca Lanzillotta of Suntory Flowers Europe, Viktoriia Taranenko of Prudac, and the men from Muller Seeds visiting Benary
ABZ Seeds, Prudac, Syngenta Flowers, Benary, and PanAmerican Seed present their assortments in the northern part of the Dutch province of Noord-Holland, together with Takii and Suntory Flowers Europe, both based in Aalsmeer. The trials are coordinated under the Fleuroselect umbrella. The range on show spans ornamental pepper plants with colour-changing fruit, large-flowered strawberry plants, colourful free-flowering petunias, dark-leaved begonias, and eye-catching Helianthus. Hem Genetics, a regular participant, is absent this year due to renovation work at its greenhouse.
One key difference from the FlowerTrials, a larger event held about a month later, in which virtually all major ornamental breeders participate, is that the Spring Trials take place entirely on the breeders' own premises. The focus is on trialling and comparing varieties, on production performance, and on honest side-by-side comparisons with competing genetics. The FlowerTrials, by contrast, tend to showcase highlights rather than the full trial process.
For this reason, the Spring Trials operate largely by appointment. The events are also intended to show how varieties perform under real growing conditions. As Gerard Werink of Syngenta explains during a tour of the company's facilities: "Here we show how a grower cultivates the crop. It's not a big show. It's grower practice."
