Nurseries: integrated management software

California Masterplant is a Business Unit of The Morning Star Co. Group, the largest California tomato processing company. With a transformation of over 3 million short tons of raw material coming from the fields, The Morning Star Group represents around 30% of the US market and 10% of the global market.
 
Since 2003, by purchasing 30% of the California Masterplant’s shares, it has entered in the vegetable nursery market, realizing a vertical integration aimed to control the whole production process of the processing tomato.

In 2015, the Morning Star group acquired 100% of the shares, becoming the sole owner of the nursery. Currently, this nursery is located in Tracy, Central Valley, heart of California's processing tomato production, and produces 300 million processing tomato seedlings a year, which it delivers to farmers for transplanting in the fields in 12-13 weeks, between March and May.

Such an high production volume has to be managed perfectly, respecting the quantities and delivery times of the seedlings for each order received – which is fundamental for the consequent field production and the timely delivery to the industry of the raw material to be transformed – and requires an accurate, simple to use production management software that can cover the entire production cycle. 

It was in 2014 that California Masterplant, given the constant growth of orders, decided to find an alternative and the choice fell on the integrated management software dedicated to the vegetable nurseries winTutor® IRIS.

winTutor® IRIS is a solution developed entirely by Selda Informatica, an Italian company based in Ascoli Piceno that has been a leader in the horticultural sector for over a decade, with 40 installations on major Italian Companies.

One of the main features of this software solution is the complete coverage of all the processes of the system, which, in addition to giving the possibility to better manage all the production steps, from sowing to the phase in the germination chamber, from the application in the greenhouse to the germination control, from displacement of parcels to delivery, also allows to manage the production of grafted plants. 
 
 Italian technology in horticultural nurseries is advanced precisely because the transplanting technique developed earlier there than in other countries. To give an example: at the end of the last century, when Italy had reached 85% of the area dedicated to transplanting in processing tomatoes, other processing tomato producing countries were only just at the beginning. Turkey was close to zero and California was at 25%. This aspect has developed a whole chain of activities which has led SELDA Informatica to seize the opportunity and develop this solution.

Some complementary data
If you want to know more about winTutor® IRIS by SELDA Informatica you can:
 visit the website,
download the brochure,
or watch the video presentation.

Sources: hortidaily.com, freshplaza.it