PROFILE

Agricola Villena Coop. V. was established at Villena (Alicante), Spain in 1919 and incorporates the section of vegetables and stone fruits in 1986. The cooperative with a total of 250 members and about 1.600 ha of cultivation is the leading enterprise producing carrots for the fresh market and mainly leek, parsnip, celery turnip and cabbage for the main distribution Spanish company. The production, based on zero residues, is along the year based on the cultivation in different ecological areas such as Mediterranean Valencian Community to more early areas in Andalucia or latest areas of production in Castilla La Mancha, Castilla León and Murcia. In order to guarantee the freshness products in the market, we own three warehouses provided with the most innovative machinery, their location describing a triangle, with its cardinal points in the south, center-east and in the north of the country. As a consequence of our commitment to quality we were honored with the “1st Price to the Agrifood Quality” awarded by the Department of Agriculture. As well, we have the international quality certificate GLOBALGAP. We develop research projects in collaboration with the institutions IVIA (Valencian Institute of Agrarian Research) and UPV (Polytechnic University of Valencia).

ROLE IN THE PROJECT

The cooperative is actively involved in the development of environmental friendly strategies in cooperation with IVIA (P5) to reduce impact of “Ca. Liberibacter solanacearum” since the detection of the bacterium in the area in 2007 and consequently the cooperative has expertise in setting up experimental field trials and in plant protection. During this project, Agricola Villena Coop. put our trial fields available to our partners for the different tests in carrot, celery, parsnip and leek crops. Agricola Villena, before planting in our plots, analyzes all seed lots to ensure they are free of CaLsol. We will conduct field trials with different products, physical barriers… Also we will detect, monitor and study psyllid species. It would be interesting to consider the study of the auxiliary fauna.

AGRICOLA VILLENA will be involved in the following work packages: WP2, WP5, WP6, WP9, WP10, WP11

STAFF

• BARTOLOMÉ PILAR
• CAMAÑEZ MARIA CARMEN
• CAÑIZARES NURIA
• DOMENE RAFAEL
• FERRANDIZ JUAN CARLOS
• MATAIX JUANI
• SANJUAN JOSÉ
• SANJUAN VIDAL SUSANA
• VIDAL ABEL