Case study: Rosen Ruland

As the queen of flowers, many people are captivated by the beauty and beguiling fragrance of the rose. At Rosen Ruland in Duisburg, roses grow as far as the eye can see. With an estate spanning 180,000 square metres, the rose-grower is one of the largest producers of cut roses in Germany. Founded in 1955 by Heinrich Ruland, his son Werner Ruland has been running the family business since 1994. Upon taking over the company, he introduced a number of new rose varieties to meet customer demand for new colours and species. Werner Ruland believes in the importance of high quality standards. In 2003, the rose grower switched the entire rose fields to environmentally friendly farming methods.

Roses are delicate and can be extremely sensitive plants – they need to be treated with great care. Pesticides can only perform properly when they are applied to all parts of the crops. In order to reduce the amount of fertiliser and pesticides required, back in 2003 Werner Ruland decided to try a new kind of crop protection technology and switched to the radial blowers from VICAR. He doubled the distance between the rows of roses so that every individual rose could be precisely targeted. The device features hydraulic height adjustment so it can be easily adjusted to the height of the respective plants at the start of each row of roses. When travelling up and down the rows, the 360-degree air jets can be sprayed in precisely the right area for the plants to be treated.

Rosen Ruland now boasts four different VICAR crop protection devices, and the fifth radial blower is in the pipeline. Werner Ruland remains as impressed by the technology, quality and efficacy of VICAR crop protection technology today as he was back in 2003:

“Since we switched to radial blowers around 15 years ago, we have been able to significantly reduce our use of pesticide on our roses. This makes our operations significantly more environmentally friendly. The reduction in pesticides also has a positive impact on our expenses. Switching to radial blowers has also increased the speed at which we can travel up and down the rows applying the pesticide, from 3.5 km/h to 6 km/h. This in turn saves a significant amount of time. Besides the healthy farm-grown roses, this equates to plenty of positives, meaning the move to VICAR was definitely worthwhile”, Werner Ruland, Rosen Ruland.

Related links: www.rosen-ruland.de