Day 19 - Good taste panel this morning
We started out early this morning with the taste panel you’ll see (I’ve included the photograph). This is the Lowestoft taste panel and includes from left to right Caroline, Andrew, Paul and Gail. It’s been quite an interesting panel this morning, the quality is good and certainly this slightly cooler weather is helping us and helping the quality, which is now significantly better.
What’s interesting about the panel today is the varieties we are growing. We’re checking two of Birdseye’s own varieties. We have our own plant breeding programme to produce varieties specifically for our own use. We name them them after birds just as a matter of interest and the Two varieties we’re tasting today are called Hawk and Swallow. Hawk is relatively new and Swallow we’ve been including in our programme for about five years now.
The programme itself is quite interesting. It’s a long-established programme not least because it takes eight years for a pea to come from the first cross, when we pair two varieties to a point were it can be included in the programme (assuming it’s got all the quality attributes we’re looking for). The fact that we’re planning so far ahead really show the degree of commitment we have to our pea business.
Maybe when we’re in the field I’ll be able to show you some of the differences between the varieties.
So long, Colin
