November/December 2020 - 20

INNOVATION
LEAFY GREENS
Seeds of change
SPINACH SPECIALIST ERIC CHRISTIANSON
FOCUSED ON DEVELOPING NEW VARIETIES
By Stephen Kloosterman
Contributing editor
WELL-KNOWN for its nutritional qualities, growers
cultivated 66,800 acres of spinach in 2019, according to
the USDA.
Eric Christianson works as a spinach crop specialist
for international seed company Rijk Zwaan in Salinas,
California. He was recently named one of SeedWorld's " Top
10 Next Gen Leaders " - leaders who are influencing the
U.S. and global seed industry.
Produce Processing recently caught up with Christianson
to get to know him and his work a bit better.
Produce Processing: Tell me a bit about your job.
Eric Christianson: As a crop specialist at Rijk Zwaan, my
job centers in several aspects of the crop itself. This involves
making decisions to bring varieties from the pre-commercial
stage to the commercial stage in the U.S. portfolio,
forecasting sales of said varieties, providing technical
advice to growers and distributors and managing customers'
needs in regards to the crop. As a crop coordinator, my
job is to work more strategically with several countries in
my cluster to investigate needs in the markets, take those
needs to R&D and plan variety launches with local crop
specialists and customers. At times, we estimate variety
crop, or product form potential to drive investment into
certain segments/projects.
PP: What sorts of requests do you get?
EC: We work with our distributors when developing new
varieties. As a small team in the U.S., we depend a lot on
the product development teams of our dealers to provide
the data needed to make best decisions on varieties in
our market. Occasionally, we will have a product that is
so different from existing products in the market that we
will need one-on-one feedback from growers/shippers/
retailers about potential.
The requests for new products range from mechanical
harvest types to different color and leaf/bulb/head/fruit
shape or texture. We also get a lot of requests for valueadded
traits like added nutrition and longer shelf life. In
the end, the requests fall under a central theme: " Show
20 NOVEMBER /DECEMBER 2 0 2 0
us something different! " I like to think that we fulfill this
request more often than not.
PP: Salinas growers have struck me as a tight-knit
group.
EC: Yes, there is an " everybody-knows- everybody "
feeling among Salinas growers. There is a good bit of
collaboration and stewardship among Salinas growers
when it comes to land swaps and crop cycle breaks (to
help with phytopathology issues).
Additionally, there are both organic and conventional
growers in the Salinas valley. Those on the outside see
these two growing systems as being at odds with each
other. From what I see in this valley, there is a mutual

November/December 2020

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