Radish
How do shoppers view radish?
Over the course of the past 10 years UK radish household penetration has expanded from 20% of the population to 30%. However, the age profile of the core radish customer continues to favour the older demographic.
Radish is loved because… Its crunchy, its colourful, its peppery and its great value for money as one of the cheapest salad items retailers sell.
Radish is not loved because… It is invisible in store, its often misunderstood and viewed as old fashioned and forgotten.
Customer insight has identified that the peppery flavour of radish is not child friendly, making what is a challenging product for a child even more challenging due to its lack of sweetness. A milder (sweeter) flavour profile has the propensity to “open up” the radish category to a broader/younger customer profile.
Changing the Taste...
The radish team have been working with key breeders in Germany to better understand the scope of future breeding material and potential solutions that could be developed to modify taste.
Research is ongoing to explore if there is a potential “sweet spot” between glucosinolates, brix and ascorbic acid (vitamin C) content within the radish, which could in part be manipulated by varietal development, however this is a longer term project.
Varietal work alone will not deliver results in isolation, environmental growing factors and nitrogen levels will impact overall taste delivery alongside chilled temperature throughout the supply chain.
The primary radish varieties that we grow are the traditional red globe radish, and we also grow a small amount of the purple globe radishes which go into mixed radish packs, this is supplemented with specialty varieties which Phil grows in Yorkshire.
Trailling a variety doesn’t mean that we will go ahead and grow it commercially, but it will add to our knowledge which will help us perfect how we grow our staple crops.”
Radish Varietal Testing & Trialing
Alongside our long-term ambition to affect taste, the team run extensive trails within both our outdoor and indoor radish growing environments.
Development of our core red varieties are key to ensuring we continues to improve consistency, disease resistance and quality of our radish.
Exploring opportunities and looking for alternative novelty aspects such as colour and shape, runs alongside our core developments stream. The ambition for these items is that they will initially be trialed in our mixed pack products.
Speciality Radish
Our strategy is to develop and test new colours through inclusion on a seasonal rotation within mixed packs. This allows us to test new types in a controlled way for ourselves, our customers and ultimately our consumers who don’t have to buy a full pack of a new proposition.
The new colours, drive increased consumer interest, through adding colour and theatre to the shelf. Hopefully attracting a younger consumer that will increase overall radish consumption and penetration.
Packing Automation: Optical Grading
Our optical grading project commenced in 2023 with the aim to find a solution to detect defects present in the crop and determine overall quality.
The expectation is that the automated solution will be able to increase throughput of inspection compared to manual sorting and decrease our reliance on seasonal labour and ultimately reducing the cost of production, while increasing capacity.
It is hoped that the project will provide a more sustainable solution within our sorting operations by reducing waste by allowing us to work more efficiently through problematic crop, rather than needing to fully write off challenging crop.
