A +6.4% cucumber yield uplift and less waste at Delphy
+6.4%
+6.2%
−18.5%
Trial Summary
Delphy, a world-leading independent horticultural research organisation, evaluated Overture® A and Overture® B in an autumn cucumber crop under commercial-style production conditions at its Improvement Centre in Bleiswijk, the Netherlands, following the trial it ran in 2025. Dee Viate (EZ) cucumbers were propagated in-house and planted in early August 2026, in an umbrella production system on rockwool slabs that had already carried the summer crop, as growers often do for an autumn planting.
Overture® A and Overture® B were each applied as a root-zone drench shortly after planting and then every four weeks, with no seed treatment. Untreated plants were grown on the neighbouring gutter under the same conditions, and Delphy also grew an untreated reference on new slabs. Delphy recorded the number and weight of marketable cucumbers at each of 47 harvests between 24 August and 29 October, and weighed any fruit that could not be sold.
Conclusions
Overture® A increased total marketable yield by +6.4% vs untreated plants grown alongside, from 16.5 to 17.6 kg/m². The extra yield came from more fruit rather than heavier fruit: the Overture® A plants produced +6.2% more marketable cucumbers (46.8 vs 44.1 per m²) at the same average fruit weight (376 g vs 375 g). Treated plants were ahead from the first week of harvest and stayed ahead through the whole season.
Treated plants also produced less waste. Over the season, 13.8 kg of fruit from the Overture® A gutter could not be sold, against 16.9 kg from the untreated gutter: 18.5% less, even though the treated plants produced more fruit. As a share of everything picked, waste fell from 1.9% to 1.5%.
Overture® B gave a smaller improvement in this trial: +1.4% yield and +2.1% fruit number, with 4.2% less waste. As in our other cucumber trials, Overture® A is the better match for cucumbers.
This autumn crop was grown on slabs reused from the summer crop. Overture® A plants on the reused slabs matched the yield of the untreated reference on new slabs (17.6 vs 17.5 kg/m²).
Reach out to see Delphy’s harvest data for yourself.
