Pre congress tours in the area of Valencia.

Nov 15, 16, 17

Cost: 140 € per delegate. This tour includes snacks, picnic lunches and bus transportation. Accommodation IS NOT INCLUDED in the price.

This tour consists of three 1-day technical visits (round trip from Valencia) to Southern, Middle and North Valencia citrus areas. These visits will be the same as those included in the Post congress tour in the area of Valencia.
Please note that these dates are immediately before the congress itself, therefore, we strongly recommend delegates to book at same hotel that they choose for the rest of the congress. You should specify these dates when filling the registration form.
Buses will depart every day at exactly 08.00 a.m from the Valencia Conference Center, the Congress venue site. Consequently, we also recommend you to book a hotel close to this site.

For logistic reasons this tour will be for a maximum of 140 delegates. Bookings will be based on the payment date.

Day 1: Visit to the Southern citrus area (about 150 Km round trip).

The first stop will be at Algemesí to visit the cooperative Copal, the largest citrus cooperative in Spain, founded in 1919. It has a 45000 m2 packinghouse with modern facilities for cleaning, selection, classification, degreening, packing and storage. They have six lines with capacity to produce 75 tones per hour of fresh fruit and they process about 110,000 tons per year.
The second stop will be at Rafelguaraf to visit “El Realengo” orchard, one of the largest citrus plantings (close to 600 hectares) in the Valencian Community. In this orchard, located in the area were tristeza epidemics first started, citrus trees were affected for years by different graft-transmissible diseases that caused low yield and reduced fruit quality. This problem was solved after replanting with pathogen-free certified plants of different sweet orange (Navelate, Lanelate, Powell, Barnfield, Chislett, Salustiana, Valencia Midknight,..) and mandarin (Nadorcott, Clemenules, Nova, Fortune,..) varieties grafted on several rootstocks (Carrizo, Citrumelo, Cleopatra, Poncirus,..). Due to its deep sandy soils with reduced pH, it is one of the few spots in Spain where trifoliate orange rootstocks can be used. They have also developed an innovative pruning system that includes partial mechanical etching for production of fresh fruit. Picnic lunch will be here.
In the afternoon buses will drive to Barcheta and then to Tavernes de Valldigna. This is a beautiful mountain area where citrus are stepped downhill in small terraces with very narrow planting distances.
If weather is clear and time allows it, in the way back to Valencia the buses would leave the freeway to drive the scenery road through the Albufera nature park and enjoy the sunset (5:00 to 5:30 p.m. at this season) close to the lake.

Day 2: Visit to the Central citrus area (about 170 Km round trip).

The first stop will be at Sagunto to visit the Zumos Valencianos del Mediterráneo S.A. processing plant, established in 2011 and dedicated to the production of very high quality refrigerated sweet orange and clementine juice. This enterprise is participated by the main citrus producers and exporters in Spain and it is prepared to process 250,000 tones of fruit per year, with a storage capacity of 40 million liters of juice.
The second visit will be to the orchard “Les Trencaes”, that has about 50 ha planted with Oronules, Nova, Hernandina, Navelate and Chislett grafted on Carrizo citrange. The whole orchard is under screen to avoid wind and hail damage. Part of the orchard is in the process of topworking with new varieties.
Then we will visit the orchard “Mas de Molla”, located in Marines, where we will enjoy a picnic lunch. It is located in a relatively new citrus development area, with a quite cool weather that produces a delay in maturity in clementines of about 3 weeks in relation to traditional areas. The orchard of 150 hectares of Clemenules grafted on Carrizo citrange, is located in a beautiful scenery.

Day 3: Visit to the Northern citrus area (about 350 Km round trip).

This day will be devoted to visit the nursery and some citrus orchards of Viveros Alcanar, the largest producer of nursery citrus plants in Spain. All varieties propagated at the nursery are free of all known virus and virus-like diseases and are originated from the IVIA protected collection of the Citrus Germplasm Bank. Three stops will be made to visit the seedbeds (3,700 m2 greenhouses), budwood increase blocks (10,000 m2 screenhouses) and plastic- and screenhouse facilities for plant production. Two citrus traditional plantings of Clemenules (23 hectares planted in 1998) and Orogrande (25 hectares planted in 2002) clementines grafted on Carrizo citrange will also be visited. A picnic lunch will be served at the nursery facilities.