The Georgian company Noma plans to collect 40 tons of berries from its blueberry orchards this year and, along with this, renovate part of the plantations.
Blueberry orchards Noma are in the Kobuleti municipality (Adjara). This season the company expects a harvest from 11 hectares (about 35 thousand seedlings), planted in 2019 with the support of several state projects and a loan from TBC Bank. In 2022, Noma received a GlobalG.A.P. certificate for these orchards. The company plans to start harvesting in the first decade of June.
In parallel with the preparation for the upcoming season, the company began a complete renovation of another of its blueberry orchards – an area of 4 hectares, which was planted later than the main area and didn’t prove productive.
“For these 4 hectares, we have purchased 15,000 blueberry seedlings in one of the Polish nurseries, but they turned out to be of the wrong variety and quality, as promised. Ultimately, we had to dig up all these seedlings, and now we are re-equipping the orchard. We plan to plant 15,000 seedlings again, but this time these are laboratory-tested seedlings that we purchased in the USA (with the help of TBC Bank).
These are seedlings of several varieties, mainly Palm Haven, Galaxy, and Colibri. When choosing varieties, we focused on a relatively early start of harvest, high yields, the large caliber of berries and their firmness,” Rodam Okropiridze, founder of Noma LLC, told EastFruit.
According to Rodam Okropiridze, this year it is planned to replace part of the seedlings on 11 hectares (where several varieties grow, including Duke and Bluecrop). The main work is scheduled for autumn when the blueberry season is over. The new seedlings will be of the Duke and Colibri varieties.
If everything goes according to plan, then in a few years, according to the company’s calculations, it will reach a blueberry harvest of 170 tons.
In addition to growing blueberries, Noma has been supplying the market with wild berries and herbs (including wild blueberries, wild rosehip, strawflower, and sea buckthorn), dried and frozen, mainly for exports. The company has its processing plant, which includes, among other things, refrigeration and storage areas and drying and shock freezing equipment.
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