The Eastern Marketing Center is located in the heart of North Carolina's most productive farmland. While parts of this region have always been known for their sweet potatoes and other vegetables, it has the potential to expand into an important supplier of many specialty fruit and vegetable crops.

Nick Augostini, Marketing Specialist, provides marketing assistance to growers, packer/shippers, and buyers in developing new markets, locating buyers and suppliers, market research, and conducting marketing promotions.

The Eastern Marketing Center works closely with the Alternative Crops Diversification Committee and the Specialty Crops Center in developing new horticultural crops that can be successfully grown and marketed from eastern N.C.

The North Carolina Specialty Crops Program (SCP) is a partnership between the North Carolina Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services and North Carolina State University. This program was initiated in 1997 to identify and develop new agricultural commodities and value-added products for the 13 counties that make up the Global Transpark Zone. The SCP is now a statewide program. Crop diversification is a major component of the SCP. Diversification is necessary to ensure that our farmers continue to have a place in the agricultural market. This effort is critical now with reductions in tobacco production and decreasing values for row crops.

The strategic plan of the SCP is to identify potential new crops; conduct the field research to find the best varieties to grow and the most efficient way to produce it; create a post-harvest handling and packaging system for it, and then research and develop markets for it.

Products from the field and greenhouse research are used in marketing programs, led by the Marketing Specialist, Nick Augostini. These include promotional events, taste tests, consumer surveys, and test-marketing sales with cooperating chain stores.

Research has been conducted on a variety of crops including; white fleshed peaches, high fructose golden cherry tomatoes, blackberries, Boniato-type sweet potatoes; yellow, white and orange fleshed seedless watermelons, specialty squashes and a variety of lettuces.

The SPRITE melon has been well accepted by the market. Sizeable acreages are now grown in eastern N.C. Visit our SPRITE page to see recipes and information on this delicious new melon.

Research is continuing to further evaluate new blackberries, specialty melons, specialty tomatoes, and seedless yellow and orange fleshed watermelons; development of specialty hispanic vegetables, specialty squashes, industrial peppers, Boniato-type sweet potatoes and a variety of different lettuces. As these new varieties become available in the market place, pages will be added to this site for further information on each new product.

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