The harvest, which gets underway at the end of every July, will be broadcast via the popular Lycored Livestream, which has already racked up more than one million views since it was launched in 2015.
The channel will also show footage from Lycored’s on-farm processing facility in the Galilee Panhandle, Israel, where the tomatoes are washed and sorted, providing a unique insight into the day-to-day activities of Lycored’s highly skilled and valued employees.
Shirley Cohen, Lycored CEO, said: “It’s that time of year again – the tomato harvest has arrived and is taking place right now on our farms in Israel. The path that has led us to this very moment is lined with tomato vines, guiding us to new discoveries from nutrient-rich oleoresin, the backbone of so much of our work, to a wealth of proprietary technologies we may never have developed otherwise.”
She added: “Seeing the beauty and evolution from seed to harvest is an amazing journey to witness, and the growth, those transitions, are worth reflecting upon and marking. We’re proud of the way we farm the tomatoes we use, and we love the idea of our stakeholders watching them grow via a live stream.”
The livestreaming initiative is part of Lycored’s campaign to highlight the importance of vertical integration, minimal waste, and transparency. The company has put in place several initiatives to improve sustainability and reduce waste and has committed to using as much as possible of the tomatoes it harvests.
For example, after the oleoresin has been extracted to produce Lycored’s range of food, wellness and ingestible skincare ingredients, the material that remains is rich in tomato serum. This is extracted for natural taste enhancement and the remaining tomato fiber is dried for use as a natural texture enhancer for the food industry. The unused raw materials such as skins, seeds and stems are repurposed – as animal feed, for example.
Lycored will also be celebrating the harvest by distributing "growing and glowing" kits around the world. These include cards embedded with tomato seeds, on which messages of love to the Earth can be written. When planted using the accompanying biodegradable trowel, the cards grow into "living love letters."