FIRST NEW VEGETABLE IN A DECADE! – FLOWER SPROUT

(Feb 25, 2011) Thursday 17th January saw Manor Fresh’s success of recent years continue at the Grower of the Year awards by winning the accolade for Best New Edible Variety with Flower Sprout.

Flower Sprout, sold exclusively by Manor Fresh to M&S, is the first new vegetable to be sold in their stores for 10 years. In fact, the development of the Flower Spout was started by Tozer Seeds around the same time that the last new vegetable hit the M&S shelves.

Flower SproutTM is a cross between Brussels sprouts and Kale which was developed to produce something a bit different, to encourage sprout haters to give it a try, to give a brassica the ‘WOW’ factor and to increase interest in eating healthy vegetables.

Tozer Seeds are a medium sized independent British breeding company, dedicated to the pursuit of excellence in vegetables. Well known for their ability to innovate, they couldn’t think of anything better than setting out to create something new, exciting, and tasty to drive consumption of vegetables with Flower SproutTM being no exception. Tozer took the humble (and often unloved) sprout, and crossed it using traditional breeding techniques with another undervalued vegetable (the kale) to produce the new vegetable. The development of Flower SproutTM has required lots of time, effort and dedication from several Tozer vegetable breeders.

The realisation of the potential commercialisation of the Flower SproutTM occurred during a joint M&S, Manor Fresh and Tozer innovation forum at the Tozer trail ground in Surrey in 2007. From this point Manor Fresh (focused M&S potato and vegetable supplier) took a selection of varieties from the Flower SproutTM range and proceeded with field trials and then commercial trials in Gloucestershire, Lincolnshire and Arbroath during 2008 and 2009. It soon became clear that, although Flower SproutTM holds its origins from two frequently grown vegetables, the merging of these crops resulted in a number of new challenges in the growing and harvesting to result in a commercially viable product. The geographical spread, however, was sufficient to surmount the production challenges to enable Flower SproutTM to be, exclusively, introduced to the M&S shelves.

News of the Flower SproutTM launch was broken by the Daily Mail on 23rd January as:

“Bad news for children: the first new vegetable in almost ten years is ready to hit the shops - and it's a sprout.” (Daily Mail online, 23 January 2010).

Setting the tone of the launch, other news agencies clamoured for information and within hours it appeared on national and worldwide news websites. It wasn’t long before several radio shows wanted in on the act, including; BBC Radio Scotland, Radio Wey, and BBC Radio Surrey. Only 10 days after the launch, Flower SproutTM and its breeder Jamie Claxton enjoyed their first TV appearance, the news item on ITV’s London Tonight programme showcased not only the quirky looks of the new vegetable, but also the taste. Off went the journalist to new restaurant Zilli Green in Soho, London, Flower SproutTM stalks under his arm, where the head chef created two delicious dishes, sampled in the studio in between giggles, by the two programme presenters. More recently, BBC Gardeners World programme featured the vegetable on its Good Friday programme where presenter Alys Fowler showed viewers how to sow and grow the new vegetable (under the alternative name of Petit PosyTM) in their own vegetable plot.

More information and recipes can be found be found at Think Vegetables