Vitacress
Vitacress Salads Ltd. is an agriculture company headquartered in St Mary Bourne, Andover, Hampshire, England. It is a fully owned subsidiary of Portugal-based company Grupo RAR. The company, which was founded in the 1950s by Malcolm Isaac, is Europe's largest provider of watercress, and also grows and packages washed rocket ( arugula), spinach, and other baby salad greens. Beyond salad, the company also produces and distributes freshly harvested new potatoes. In addition to the UK, Vitacress has its own farms in Portugal and Spain. Vitacress supplies retailers and foodservice operators in several markets. History The company, was founded in 1951 by Malcolm Isaac. In 1959, the watercress cultivation estate of Eliza James, known as 'the Watercress Queen of Covent Garden', was sold to Vitacress Salads Ltd. In addition to the UK, Vitacress started operations in Portugal and Spain. Vitacress supplied retailers in the UK under their own brand (JSainsbury or Marks & Spencers). In Por ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Eliza James
Eliza James (30 September 1855 – 26 September 1927) was an English watercress grower and entrepreneur, known as the Watercress Queen of Covent Garden. Her watercress business was the largest watercress company of the time in Europe. Life She was born Eliza Currall, in Birmingham, England, on 30 September 1855. She began selling watercress to help support her family following the suicide of her father. At the age of 16, she was under detention as a female juvenile offender at the Warwickshire Reformatory for Girls in Coventry, which taught offenders a trade. Around 1877, she moved to London. On 28 May 1877 she married William Arthur Griffiths, a mariner, in Liverpool and they had four daughters and three sons. They lived in Coventry, Birmingham and Liverpool before settling in Sheffield as fruit and vegetable sellers. By 1886, she owned a fruit and commission agency business at Castlefolds Market in Sheffield. Her husband was an alcoholic, and on three occasions stabbed her. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Odemira
Odemira ( or ) is a town and a municipality in Beja District in the Portuguese region of Alentejo. The population in 2011 was 26,066, in an area of 1720.60 km2, making it the largest municipality of Portugal by area. It is famous for its wild beaches and for being home to a significant Dutch and German community. The village of Zambujeira do Mar is home to the Festival do Sudoeste, one of the biggest rock festivals in Europe. The municipality of Odemira has great agricultural potential, specially in the western area of the region, and is home to major operations of important agricultural companies like Vitacress, world leader in the salad market. The present Mayor is José Alberto Guerreiro, elected by the Socialist Party. The municipal holiday is 8 September. Geography The municipality of Odemira is located in southwestern Portugal, bordered by the municipalities of Sines and Santiago do Cacém to the north, Ourique to the east, and the Algarvian municipalities of Alje ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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St Mary Bourne
St Mary Bourne is a village and civil parish in the Basingstoke and Deane district of Hampshire, England. It lies on the valley of the Bourne Rivulet, a tributary of the River Test, northeast of Andover. Governance The village of St. Mary Bourne is part of the civil parish of St. Mary Bourne, and is part of the Burghclere, Highclere and St. Mary Bourne ward of Basingstoke and Deane borough council. The borough council is a Non-metropolitan district of Hampshire County Council. It includes Binley, and the hamlets of Swampton and Stoke further up the Bourne rivulet valley. Geography The village is in a rural area of downland, with a mixture of farms and woodlands nearby. The Bourne Rivulet flows through the centre of the village and has been known to flood. Landmarks It has thatched houses and in the south part of the village is the flint and stone church of St Peter. The church is notable for its 12th-century Tournai font Tournai fonts are a type of baptismal font made ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Andover, Hampshire
Andover ( ) is a town in the English county of Hampshire. The town is on the River Anton, a major tributary of the Test, and is situated alongside the major A303 trunk road at the eastern end of Salisbury Plain, west of the town of Basingstoke, both major rail stops. It is NNW of the city of Winchester, north of the city of Southampton and WSW of London. Andover is twinned with the towns of Redon in France, Goch in Germany, and Andover, Massachusetts in the United States. History Early history Andover's name is recorded in Old English in 955 as ''Andeferas'', and is thought to be of Celtic origin: compare Welsh ''onn dwfr'' = "ash (tree) water". The first mention in history is in 950 when King Edred is recorded as having built a royal hunting lodge there. In 962 King Edgar called a meeting of the Saxon 'parliament' (the Witenagemot) at his hunting lodge near Andover. Of more importance was the baptism, in 994, of a Viking king named Olaf (allied with the Danish king ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south. The country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain, which lies in the North Atlantic, and includes over 100 smaller islands, such as the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight. The area now called England was first inhabited by modern humans during the Upper Paleolithic period, but takes its name from the Angles, a Germanic tribe deriving its name from the Anglia peninsula, who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries. England became a unified state in the 10th century and has had a significant cultural and legal impact on the wider world since the Age of Discovery, which began during the 15th century. The English language, the Anglican Church, and Engli ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Grupo RAR
Grupo RAR, one of Portugal, Portugal’s leading business groups, comprises a portfolio of diversified businesses in the areas of packaging, food, real estate and services. With a turnover in 2019, of 781 million euros and 4,228 employees, RAR Group is present in Portugal, Brazil, Germany, Mexico, Poland, Spain, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom. The company is headquartered in Porto and was founded in 1962 by João Macedo Silva as RAR - Refinarias de Açúcar Reunidas, S.A.R.L., with an initial capital of 10 million escudos. A piece of land was by then purchased at Rua Manuel Pinto de Azevedo in Porto for the construction of the future industrial sugar refining plant which is the origin of the company. External links * References [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Watercress
Watercress or yellowcress (''Nasturtium officinale'') is a species of aquatic flowering plant in the cabbage family Brassicaceae. Watercress is a rapidly growing perennial plant native to Europe and Asia. It is one of the oldest known leaf vegetables consumed by humans. Watercress and many of its relatives, such as garden cress, mustard, radish, and wasabi, are noteworthy for their piquant flavors. The hollow stems of watercress float in water. The leaf structure is pinnately compound. Small, white, and green inflorescences are produced in clusters and are frequently visited by insects, especially hoverflies, such as ''Eristalis'' flies. Taxonomy Watercress is listed in some sources as belonging to the genus ''Rorippa'', although molecular evidence shows those aquatic species with hollow stems are more closely related to ''Cardamine'' than ''Rorippa''. Despite the Latin name, watercress is not particularly closely related to the flowers popularly known as nasturtiums (''Trop ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Arugula
Arugula (American English) or rocket (Commonwealth English) (''Eruca vesicaria''; syns. ''Eruca sativa'' Mill., ''E. vesicaria'' subsp. ''sativa'' (Miller) Thell., ''Brassica eruca'' L.) is an edible annual plant in the family Brassicaceae used as a leaf vegetable for its fresh, tart, bitter, and peppery flavor. Other common names include garden rocket (in Britain, Australia, South Africa, Ireland, and New Zealand), and eruca. It is also called "ruchetta," "rucola," "rucoli," "rugula," "colewort," and "roquette." ''Eruca sativa'', which is widely popular as a salad vegetable, is a species of ''Eruca'' native to the Mediterranean region, from Morocco and Portugal in the west to Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt and Turkey in the east.Med-Checklist''Eruca sativa''./ref>Blamey, M. & Grey-Wilson, C. (1989). ''Flora of Britain and Northern Europe''. . It is sometimes conflated with ''Diplotaxis tenuifolia'', known as "perennial wall rocket," another plant of the family Brassicaceae that ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Spinach
Spinach (''Spinacia oleracea'') is a leafy green flowering plant native to central and western Asia. It is of the order Caryophyllales, family Amaranthaceae, subfamily Chenopodioideae. Its leaves are a common edible vegetable consumed either fresh, or after storage using preservation techniques by canning, freezing, or dehydration. It may be eaten cooked or raw, and the taste differs considerably; the high oxalate content may be reduced by steaming. It is an annual plant (rarely biennial), growing as tall as . Spinach may overwinter in temperate regions. The leaves are alternate, simple, ovate to triangular, and very variable in size: long and broad, with larger leaves at the base of the plant and small leaves higher on the flowering stem. The flowers are inconspicuous, yellow-green, in diameter, and mature into a small, hard, dry, lumpy fruit cluster across containing several seeds. In 2018, world production of spinach was 26.3 million tonnes, with China alone accounti ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Potatoes
The potato is a starchy food, a tuber of the plant ''Solanum tuberosum'' and is a root vegetable native to the Americas. The plant is a perennial in the nightshade family Solanaceae. Wild potato species can be found from the southern United States to southern Chile. The potato was originally believed to have been domesticated by Native Americans independently in multiple locations,University of Wisconsin-Madison, ''Finding rewrites the evolutionary history of the origin of potatoes'' (2005/ref> but later genetic studies traced a single origin, in the area of present-day southern Peru and extreme northwestern Bolivia. Potatoes were domesticated there approximately 7,000–10,000 years ago, from a species in the ''Solanum brevicaule'' complex. Lay summary: In the Andes region of South America, where the species is indigenous, some close relatives of the potato are cultivated. Potatoes were introduced to Europe from the Americas by the Spanish in the second half of the 16th c ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Portugal
Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira. It features the westernmost point in continental Europe, and its Iberian portion is bordered to the west and south by the Atlantic Ocean and to the north and east by Spain, the sole country to have a land border with Portugal. Its two archipelagos form two autonomous regions with their own regional governments. Lisbon is the capital and largest city by population. Portugal is the oldest continuously existing nation state on the Iberian Peninsula and one of the oldest in Europe, its territory having been continuously settled, invaded and fought over since prehistoric times. It was inhabited by pre-Celtic and Celtic peoples who had contact with Phoenicians and Ancient Greek traders, it was ruled by the Ro ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |