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Fruit Attraction 2025: Hydroponics Discoveries and Industry Surprises · Hydroponics Daily

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Hello there and welcome back to
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Hydroponics Daily, your go-to podcast for everything soilless cultivation.
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I'm your host Dr. Russell Sharp, the founder
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of Utrema Limited and I took a day off this week
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to go to Fruit Attraction in
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Madrid and I'm going to give you all the findings
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relating to hydroponics that I discovered at Fruit
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Attraction which is one of the premier trade shows
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for fruit and the fresh produce sector
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in general now you might be thinking fruit logistica have
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you ever heard of that that's a trade show in berlin in february and
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that was normally considered to be the premier fresh produce
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trade show worldwide but fruit attraction's been
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going for about five years now in madrid and it
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has one distinct advantage over the fruit logistica
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trade show in that it's not in eastern europe in
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the middle of winter which it's nice
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once you're in there but getting in and out of the show and moving
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around getting to berlin and back again it's hard work
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in february whereas madrid i was able to get there and back in a day no hotels
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required i did have i do have to admit that i paid extra for business class
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fast track in the airport and pod parking where i got a it's nothing to do with podcasts i got a.
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Little automated pod parked for me so
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i saved a lot of time that way so i didn't need to stay over so
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i was able to get to madrid and back in a day and still
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spent a good six hours at this trade show looking for hydroponics and
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anything to do with hydroponics so really good
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it's grown massively it's only been going for about five years but it's now the
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size of say fruit logistica was say seven years
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ago so there was loads and loads of companies there and companies
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from all around the world there were three halls for spanish growers and spanish
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technology probably about three or four halls for other europeans and then a
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hall for america both north and south and central and then a hall for asia and
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and i think that was combined with the african hall as well.
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So very interesting. Key takeaway you find from going to these two shows,
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these fruit shows, is that the people who've moved fruit from A to B are the
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people who are making serious, serious dollar.
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Their stands were massive. They had the best bars.
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They had Spanish hams on free to anyone coming onto their stand. They had paella.
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They had free giveaways. they had massive screens
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to display their technologies and things like this that the
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people who move fruit from a to b the distributors
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they were the guys making a serious money what was disheartening from somebody
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who makes specialist fertilizers biostimulants and biopesticides was that the
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biostimulant companies were the little companies around the edge of the show
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floor and it's disheartening because these companies have been going for a number of years now,
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biosteamilants are nothing new, and they're just not growing,
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and they're not seeing the, everyone says, you know, biosteamilants is worth
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this much, it's going to be worth so many billion in so many years.
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These companies are still the same size, and they're still the same crappy stands
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that they had, you know, seven years ago.
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So they're not invested in new massive stands.
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There were some really big stands by some fertilizer companies,
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and even some vegan fertilizer companies.
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That are basically just selling microbial products and nothing else.
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Not sure whether that is because the Spanish market is massive for microbial
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products or because they've had a big lump of investment.
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Probably the latter. There were some really big, massive, really impressive
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vegan fertilizer companies.
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I mean, the problem with vegan fertilizers, you can't even use animal waste.
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You can't use like chicken, I don't know if you can use chicken manure.
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You certainly can't use blood bone meal and things like this so which
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are normally organic fertilizers so that was really interesting to see
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there were some really big organic and
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vegan fertilizer stands not many fertilizer stands though really really interesting
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there's lots of lots of packing equipment there was a few hydroponic companies
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but fertilizers was few and far between they're obviously the big pesticide
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companies like Syngenta, Bayer, BASF,
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Cortiva were there showing their wares.
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There were a few microbial companies, some really interesting microbial companies,
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some that were, as I say, at Utrema, we only have a couple of living products,
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but there was one, I'm looking to develop one microbial product for a very,
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very specific niche use, not in hydroponics, and there was a company there that
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can basically take your bacteria once you isolate it and grow it up.
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So that's something i'm looking at so i'm interested in that and i was talking to a company that does.
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Granular fertilizers because we talked in the past about how the likes of osmocotes
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and miracle grow sell those plastic coated granules and they're supposed to
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be controlled release and they and i said this is bad because they releases
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microplastic it's the only time you ever really,
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willingly throw plastic at your soil i think that's bad and turns out speaking to some of them.
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There's one granular product I was interested in.
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He says, oh yeah, we work with ICL. I said, well, why are you working with ICL?
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I said, oh yeah, because they make Osmocote. I didn't realize this.
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Maybe I'm stupid, effing stupid Russell, but Osmocote is owned by ICL.
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These are the guys putting the plastic in the soil. They're also the company
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that, you know, talked about funding the Gadza 585 in Palestine,
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burned down the greenhouses.
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And yeah, there's loads of crap on ICL. You know, former CEO got resigned for
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various reasons as well.
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I'm not going to go into, I'm not going to pick a fight with ICL anymore. I don't need it.
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What else was I looking at? That was interesting.
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There wasn't much on novel crops. There were very few novel crops coming in.
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There was a few microgreen companies, not as many as i would expect there
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was very few hydroponic companies a
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lot of the chinese off the shelf hydroponic systems
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the there weren't the likes of
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say lettuce grow or any of the systems there was no lighting companies there
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at all so it was really just focused on field-grown fruit there wasn't a focus
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on tomatoes and cucumbers i guess that's a different show there's a show down in Almeria for that.
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So it was really just like your
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bananas, your oranges, but then also weird things like globe artichokes.
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And yeah, it was a bit of a strange show really.
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I guess, you know, it attracts a certain type of exhibitor and some of them
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that if your competitors aren't there, you're not going to go there.
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So there's opportunities there for people who might not normally exhibit or even go to the show.
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And there was even a company that had a blockchain coin, a Bitcoin type thing. It was called GoPyro.
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Global coins and something like this that was carbon neutral or actually sucked
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in carbon when you bought it i'm not sure how that worked but yeah bizarre sort
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of companies that were there,
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and there was a couple of microalgae biostimulant companies and they were showing
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their products very popular in spain that because they don't have the ascophyllum
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seaweed extract to produce,
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seaweed extract so they produce the microalgae product
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and they've got lots of sun for growing them bioreactors one
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of them by a rise and biotech unfortunately also
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sell a cobalt product which is not
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cool and we talked in the past about cobalt how it's carcinogenic fertilizer
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so those guys need to book their ideas up and stop selling cobalt so you could
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buy a rise and that would be fantastic stop poisoning the farmers with carcinogenic
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cobalt i really like speaking to the growers from sort of central asia so like
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um or western asia as you call it like georgia.
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And just like that there was a georgian stand that was
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just loads of blueberries blueberries are really massive massive crop in ukraine
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georgia place like that and they had like blueberry juice and that you could
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try on the stand which i thought was really nice loads of stands had bars with
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beer and coke and things like that but blueberry juice well you I've never had blueberry juice.
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They had blueberry liqueur, but they weren't giving that away,
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unfortunately. It did look pretty nice. It wasn't blue. It was white.
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There was, what was really disappointing from a British perspective was that
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there were hundreds of Germans, hundreds of Dutch, hundreds of Argentinian,
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Italian stands, and there were three British stands.
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No, actually, two and a half on the official stand, and then maybe two on the
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fruit and apple production. So maybe I'd say probably like definitely less than
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10 stands from the UK, which is pathetic and really disheartening.
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And like even North Macedonia had a biggest stand.
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Bananas that have been dipped in wax as well i
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have no idea why the the top of the banana on the
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hand as you were of the banana is that the word technical word dipped
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in wax no idea was that i saw some cabbages and some turnips
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in glass jars as if they were the crown jewels i
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thought that was quite good you know like you know you put like a
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protection around it and say do not enter and you know warning lasers
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and then there's a cabbage inside the glass you
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know it lit up and stuff that's cool
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how you sort of frame that there was a number of chefs that
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were doing recipes on certain stands with the
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produce obviously all in spanish so i couldn't understand what
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the likes of daniel del toro you know
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some ginger chef was was saying a couple
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of lady chefs as well lots of banana stands one
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stand had a little rotten bananas on their stand no idea
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what that was about didn't want to stop and find out there was
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a it was a good stand by enza the
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seed company they had hydroponics and
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like little kettles and copper pipes coming through the
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the hydroponic system that was really cool like
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glass kettles and then like crops that you could walk on the crop and it was
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like a glass above it like a bridge that was quite funky what else did i see
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let's just have a look at my notes lots of plants for sale micro-propagated
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plants so you could buy like micro-propagated strawberries and kiwi plants things like this.
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Fair few say bacterial products just looking through my.
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Notes here a nano fertilizer company one company
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that's from turkey that was doing copper fertilizers and
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the front of their banner said be safe with copper but you
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can't really be safe with copper because it's a toxic heavy metal so the
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best best way to do it without that is to not use copper based products
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if you do one thing from this podcast it's avoid
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copper based products there are a number of them in hydroponics avoid them
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they're going to do you no good and they're just going to poison your plants your soil
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your own media and your customers the santander
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stand stand the bank they had tony
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nadal giving a talk tony nadal if you don't know
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is the uncle of rafa nadal and
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he coached rafa nadal to be arguably the
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best tennis player in the world and i just
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had a massive crowd imagine i couldn't think of that in another
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in england of a trade show where you would have
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the uncle of the famous sportsman and he would attract a
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massive crowd only only in
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spain but mind you only in america would you have
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a massive audience for a university college sports
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person footballer in the uk if you
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were if you played football soccer or
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any sports any sport at all for your university you wouldn't you would not be
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famous and not even your friends would acknowledge you were something special
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so that's something you know the difference between sports people in spain us
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and the uk yeah i just found out that that coin is the cool earth coin.
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Let's say, is a currency created by Cool Earth CO2 that represents CO2 reduction
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through regenerative agriculture.
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That's where we're getting our CO2 reduction from. We're buying carbon credits, aren't we?
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For every fruit pack purchased under this model, the consumer receives one CEC,
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equivalent to 50 kilograms of CO2, removed from the environment.
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Additionally, you can collect 20 CECs. You'll receive a certified carbon credit.
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With this credit, You can either contribute to reducing CO2 emissions on the
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planet and become zero or redeem it for money. The choice is yours.
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That's interesting. There was an interesting little handheld scanner that told
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you if your fruit was ready for harvest.
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So you literally like just shoved it onto a fruit and it measures bricks,
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firmness, starch in real time and tells you if it's ready for harvest.
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Because one of the issues with fruit harvesting is to find out if a fruit is
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ready to is ripe you need to cut it in two. Obviously that's not a very good idea.
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There were grapes that.