After Max Verstappen’s successful season, many Dutch people are walking around with some Formula 1 fever. Reason enough for AIP to set up two race simulators in one of the conference rooms for a week and give our employees the opportunity to race against the clock in a virtual F1 car – and even more fun – against their colleagues. Ever since, the conference room has been regularly occupied until late at night with people practicing to qualify for the Mercado trophy.
The connection between Formula 1 and the breeding industry is not so far-fetched. The introduction of a new vegetable variety may very well be compared to the launch of a new F1 car for the upcoming season. Potentially, the new car is even better than its predecessor and hopefully faster than its competitors. But the question often remains: how do you realize this potential?
To start the season well-prepared, it is essential to run practice laps on different tracks to collect data for the most optimal settings for the vehicle. A nice metaphor for introducing a new variety to the market. On paper, it could be a very good variety, but will it show its full potential in practice? Trials under different growing conditions and in different climatic zones, compared to existing established varieties, should provide data that can demonstrate the added value of the variety.
Distributors and growers test the new genetics under different conditions and document their experiences to get an idea of the optimal settings for the respective cultivation conditions, in order to get the maximum yield from the variety. After all, pole position is always the objective.
Mercado is the software solution that can optimally support this complex process of variety introduction and trialing. Mercado offers the tools to collect and analyze the data from the training rounds, to help introduce the variety to the market in the most effective way.
Would you like to test drive Mercado? We would be more than happy to show you during a demo what the possibilities are of this software, which is developed specifically for the industry.
Do not hesitate to contact us!
