"With our social distancing production and packaging methods, the shelf life of our strawberries is much longer," says Erust Tarim. The Turkish grower started harvesting strawberries from his hydroponic gutters recently.
Erust Tarim, which has many kinds of agricultural production on a total area of more than 60 hectares in Antalya's Serik and Korkuteli districts and Burdur's Golhisar district, started to produce strawberries in the air hydroponically. The strawberries are grown on a system installed at a height of 1 meter in a greenhouse of about 0.5 hectares in a way that they do not come into contact with each other during the ripening process on their branches starting from flowering. The strawberries are also prepared in a way that they do not touch each other in packaging.
Company marketing manager Burak Akbulut: “Strawberries are very delicate, when they touch each other, it deforms and deteriorates quickly. The shelf life of strawberries is significantly shortened due to contact with the soil during the production phase and contact with each other in packaging. You have to consume strawberries you buy from the market or the market almost the same day. We produce soilless strawberries in a greenhouse of about 1.5 hectares. The yield is four times higher than the production in the soil. Both durability and shelf life are much longer."
"We created a special packaging style for the picked strawberries. Strawberries can be placed one by one and placed in viols like egg boxes, they do not touch each other and have a longer shelf life. The shelf life is up to 10 days with this production and social distancing packaging method.“
A total of 546,000 tons of strawberries are produced in Turkey in 2020 in 180,000 hectares. Nearly 203,000 tons of the production took place in greenhouses and nearly 70,000 tons are produced in Antalya across 1,300 hectares. 2.1 million USD worth of strawberries is exported from Antalya in 2020.
Source: Hurriyet