On Thursday 29th June, the trial was planted in Pau, France, after 15 days of delay due to the weather conditions. Our partners were able to collect plant samples in the first stage, one month after plantation, but a few weeks later the trial deteriorated until now it is unfortunately really bad.
The harvest had several problems: First, the broccoli flowers didn’t grow well. With the hot temperatures, the flower induction didn’t go well and they had small flowers with leaves in the middle, called bractation. They don’t know if they are in the 50 % expected size or more or less and it’s very heterogeneous in the same plot.
Second, they suspect to have had Contarinia nasturtii at the beginning of the plantation because some plants don’t have hearts. And then some bacteria came over, so these plants rot. In some plots, there are only a few plants with a heart. With the hot temperatures and the irrigation, Alternaria brassicae developed on the plants and then some opportunist bacteria came too. The leaves aren’t well and for plants that have a heart, some flowers rot too. They might have lack too, that explains the bad development. The plants are small, they don’t have the expected size.
To finish the experiment, the broccolis were hailed last Monday 11th September and the leaves were minced.
For all these problems producers don’t do broccolis during this period in our area. French partners are not sure that if they had planted at the end of July they would have fared better, due to the high temperatures at the end of August and beginning of September.
The following pictures show the problems encountered during the process.
