Theft of blueberry plants in Huelva raises alarm bells

The theft of 2,840 blueberry plants on a farm belonging to an Onubafruit farm will cost the Huelva cooperative around €7,000 and are just the tip of the iceberg. As all the stolen plants belong to an extra-early variety developed by Onubafruit, which has exclusivity for its production and marketing, the greatest damage will be to intellectual property rights for a variety which can take up to 10 years of work to develop.

This is not the first robbery suffered by the second-tier cooperative, with another 10 plants stolen from a different farm during the previous week.