"The event has picked up around mid to late morning and has been busy over lunch time. From our point of view, there are three purposes for us being here.
One is just to make contact with people who do not normally get the opportunity to see us and then we make ourselves available to talk about the research that we are funding or any specific publications that people have not got that they would like to get from us.
There are two other things we have been promoting this year, one is the WET Centre, because we are now involved with the WET Centre, there have been 4 farm tours today, we are part funding that so we are trying to raise the profile of our involvement.
The third thing we are trying to promote is the Plum Demonstration Centre, there was a farm tour at quarter to twelve and we did a launch of the Plum Demonstration Centre and also have been showcasing a very early new plum selection.
What we are trying to do with plums is to spread the season of production and there is a new early variety which had been demonstrated at the Plum Demonstration Centre. We have got the fruit here so people have been coming onto the stand and tasting it and saying 'that's really a terrific variety' and we have used that as an opportunity to tell people about the Plum Demonstration Centre. So its been successful, we have had a really good number of people who came to the tour, it looks as if it was about 40 or 50 people that came to that and the press were there as well so that has helped to raise its profile."
Scott Raffle, Knowledge Exchange Manager (Soft Fruit/Tree Fruit) at AHDB Horticulture