Berries not na­tive to Trinidad and To­ba­go, have of­fi­cial­ly been grown on these shores.

Ralph Birk­hoff, co-founder and chief com­mer­cial of­fi­cer of Is­land Grow­ers Caribbean and act­ing gen­er­al man­ag­er at Berrycove Ltd, yes­ter­day con­firmed the break­through in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia Ltd

Last week Berrycove Ltd, us­ing its so­cial me­dia pages, post­ed an im­age of the first rasp­ber­ry ever grown in T&T for com­mer­cial dis­tri­b­u­tion.

“First fruit­ing on­ly 33 days from plug plant­i­ng. This is a high wa­ter mark for us and all cred­it goes to our amaz­ing hor­ti­cul­tur­al team,” it stat­ed.

Birk­hoff al­so laud­ed the team ef­fort that helped the team achieve the feat.

“From bare ground to de­sign­ing and build­ing one of the most ad­vanced green­house projects in the Caribbean, to first fruit­ing of our im­port­ed En­rosadi­ra rasp­ber­ries, all in 14 months. A great team ef­fort,” Birk­hoff post­ed on his so­cial me­dia.

Ear­li­er in the week the Berrycove Ltd team al­so post­ed that the first black­ber­ry flow­ers were al­ready pop­ping out of the plants af­ter on­ly a month from plant­i­ng the plugs.

“We’re so for­tu­nate to have such a great crew of young ex­pert hor­ti­cul­tur­al­ists,” it stat­ed.

The Berrycove green­house farm is lo­cat­ed at the Cove Es­tate in To­ba­go.

Birk­hoff said the com­pa­ny did not want to make any fur­ther com­ment con­cern­ing the break­through to the press at this time.

He said the com­pa­ny was still work­ing on fin­ish­ing con­struc­tion on its farm site in To­ba­go.

The com­pa­ny first an­nounced the plan to grow these fruits in 2021 af­ter Berrycove was formed fol­low­ing a joint ven­ture be­tween An­tho­ny N Sab­ga Ltd, Is­land Grow­ers Caribbean and Alqui­mi Re­new­ables LLC.

The com­pa­ny worked through the pan­dem­ic to set up four green­hous­es, of which two will be ded­i­cat­ed to grow­ing straw­ber­ries, while the oth­ers will grow cane berries, black­ber­ries and rasp­ber­ries.

This ven­ture is ex­pect­ed to help re­duce im­ports, as the lo­cal­ly grown berries would cut the num­ber of fruit im­port­ed for con­sump­tion.