Summer Open Days in Tsalapitsa – Sharing Experience and Effective Solutions in Vegetable Production

Summer is already here and it is time for the Summer Open Days at Oppora Zaden, which will be held on 5, 6 and 7 June in the village of Tsalapitsa. It is hardly a secret that here you can meet colleagues and experts with many years of experience and knowledge, ready to share with you the subtleties and proven solutions in vegetable growing.

The programme of the Open Days includes a full range of technologies and products for the cultivation of greenhouse vegetable gardens. Boril and Maria Nikolovi, the organisers of the event, will present new varieties and technologies. FMC Agro Bulgaria has provided effective crop protection programmes, while the task of Nixi Fox is plant nutrition.

This year the focus is on new cucumber varieties. Along with the already established and well-known varieties such as Defense and Kalunga, visitors to the greenhouse can see Lockheed, suitable for every season, and the newest variety Skukuza with rapid growth and good tolerance to angular leaf spot and powdery mildew.

Oppora Zaden Bulgaria – a synonym for modern breeding and professional vegetable production

Oppora Zaden also offers tomato varieties resistant to tomato brown rugose fruit virus (ToBRFV), which in recent years has been one of the most dangerous pathogens affecting this crop.

As for peppers, you will also see new varieties, high-yielding and with excellent shelf life, suitable both for the fresh market and for processing.

Science – practice

In the greenhouses of Oppora Zaden, science is also welcome. Maria and Boril experiment and learn every day, and in this way they manage to pass on their experience in the company of pupils, students, research institutes, producers and lovers of tasty vegetables.

One of the projects in which Oppora Zaden participates together with 9 producers and partners from the Maritsa Vegetable Crops Research Institute – Plovdiv, the Agricultural University and the National Agricultural Advisory Service, is dedicated to reducing pesticides in vegetable production. The introduction of biological plant protection on farms, as an alternative to conventional plant protection, requires compliance with a set of practices.

“Monitoring is the most important condition for reducing plant protection products,” shared Boril Nikolov at a seminar organised by the National Agricultural Advisory Service (NAAS) during AGRA 2025.

If there is no monitoring, neither the type of pest nor the beginning of its occurrence can be established and, accordingly, proper control cannot be carried out. “Similar to plant nutrition, which before it starts requires a soil analysis to be carried out,” Nikolov adds.

The project, involving farmers from the Pazardzhik–Plovdiv region, is structured around three objectives – creation of traps, introduction of bioagents and development of a web platform to facilitate farmers in pest identification. During the project, various traps, pheromone lures and methods for their distribution in protected and open fields are created, as well as methods for interpreting the information obtained from them. In the greenhouse in Tsalapitsa, yellow rolls are used, which are stretched along the length and serve to catch all kinds of pests throughout the year. There is also a new light trap introduced in the control of the tomato leafminer. The project also includes the use of 3 bioagents, which do not perform according to the initial expectations, but with proper monitoring all bioagents can work under certain conditions.

“When part of the working time on the farm is devoted to monitoring, then biological methods also become more effective,” comments Boril Nikolov, who, since the very establishment of Oppora Zaden, has been adhering to Good Agricultural Practices and Integrated Pest Management methods.

For the good mood of the guests at the Summer Open Days there is a special gourmet area, where they will be able to enjoy special signature dishes prepared with vegetables from Oppora Zaden by professional chefs.