Symrise Diana Food digs into soil biodiversity and agronomy to boost fruit for baby food

06 Oct 2021 --- Symrise Diana Food has organized and instituted a new training session targeting French Alps farmers who supply baby food fruits. The program, which focuses on best practices for soil biodiversity, aims at improving the quality and yield of the key crops used in baby foods.

Many farmers follow traditional agronomy practices passed down from previous generations. Often, they would benefit from a deeper understanding of the nature of their soil can improve output.

The goodness of the terroir
Symrise Diana Food agronomists can show farmers the role soil plays in producing fruits and vegetables that capture all the inherent goodness of their terroir. 

Consumers want baby foods with natural, clean, and simple ingredients processed in the most gentle way.The company says that combining this new technical knowledge with the farmers’ traditional methods yields very high quality. 

According to Aurélie Pellé, global fruit product line director at Symrise Diana Food, consumers are looking for products for infants that come as close as possible to homemade. 

“They want baby foods with natural, clean, and simple ingredients processed in the most gentle way. For this reason, agronomy plays such an important role in the category. Growing the most nutritious fruits and vegetables allows minimal processing and an end product that stays true to itself.”

Addressing the needs of children 
Symrise Diana Food offers an extensive range of baby food ingredients. 

They support the specific nutritional needs of children in the age groups of 6 months to 3 years, beginning with introducing solid foods into the diet. 

Fruit product streams include bananas, apples and strawberries. Vegetable streams include carrot, tomato and spinach. Symrise Diana Food production sites carry the FSC22000 certificate. 

This allows the company to provide ingredients that meet the health and safety standards this category demands, including minimum levels of contaminants, low microbiology levels, and low levels of chemical contaminants and foreign bodies. 

Consumers increasingly look for organic ingredients in the baby food category. Therefore, we find more organic products in the market than in any other category. The Symrise Diana Food Baby Food portfolio meets this demand, with organic certification compliant with the European, US and Chinese markets.

Symrise Diana Food is in a position where the company can select the best varieties and the best growing conditions to maximize the potential of the species. The Symrise Diana Food program aims to improve the quality and yield of the key crops used in baby foods.

With proximity to farmers and producers, Symrise Diana Food agronomists are fully involved in the cultivation cycle, guaranteeing traceability, transparency and sustainability of agricultural practices. 

In line with Innova Market Insights’ Top Trend for 2021, “Transparency Triumphs,” consumers are demanding more about the origins of their food.

Earlier this year, Symrise Diana Food agreed with SMAG Smart Agriculture to develop a customized mobile software app that will digitize the global agronomic activities of Symrise Diana Food. The app, which is part of the SMAG Agreo business software platform, will create a digital agro-community composed of Symrise Diana Food’s 13 global agronomists and its fruit and vegetable producers.

Edited by Elizabeth Green