Great tasting, premium lettuce with Salanova

Great taste, easy processing

Our Salanova® lettuce is a premium product that showcases our whole-of-chain approach, which starts with our Research and Development (R&D) team to select and breed the very best varieties. The mixes of red Salanova butter leaves and green Salanova butter varieties have been decades in the making and are increasingly in demand across the Asia-Pacific market.

“We select lettuce varieties that cover all the needs of consumers, growers and retailers,” says Frances Tolson, Account Manager at Rijk Zwaan Australia.

“Salanova produces leaves that are suitable for various seasons, are flexible enough to tolerate processing, while also being convenient and taste great."

Hussey & Co. have been a valued customer of Rijk Zwaan Australia for more than 30 years and grow Cos, butterhead, or Salanova® varieties, many of which contain the innovative Knox™ trait. They share our passion for top quality produce and continuous innovation.

“Rijk Zwaan is a company renowned for its innovation in lettuce and we are always very interested in looking at their new developments that might give us that extra edge in the market,” says Hussey & Co Managing Director, Jeremy Haw.

“Our single most important objective is to provide all our customers in the local and export markets with the very best quality product all year round. From a salad leaf point of view, oxidation is always an issue and the delayed ‘pinking’, also known as ‘browning’ in the Knox™ varieties gives us extra time to market. We export a lot of product (to Bangkok, Dubai, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Tokyo), so every day counts.

“With lettuce, you eat with your eyes so it has to look fresh and clean cut.”

Unique 'one cut, ready' varieties

Rijk Zwaan's Frances Tolson commented, "Our independent research confirms that consumers are looking for more salad mixes that contain high quality lettuce leaves, yet the processing and growing experience must be second-to-none for our customers, ”

“The Salanova green and red butter varieties were certainly amongst the favourites in our taste tests. The research results gave us the confidence to share the opportunity that these special leaves could create.

“Knox lifts the whole standard for the industry. Often you get product that’s showing signs of browning in the bag, or a box with a leaf that’s started to oxidise early and it ruins the whole mix – so if you can avoid that, it’s an advantage. Knox is outstanding, it’s the biggest thing Rijk Zwaan has done since the introduction of butterhead Salanova lettuce.”