About the HDCOur aim is "To serve British growers by being a top-class, efficient and progressive facilitator of near-market horticultural research and development and the associated technology transfer. In addition the Company will sponsor market research or promotion of specific products where there is shown to be a collective need for such activity. The Company should provide clear value for money and be respected as making a major contribution to the profitability of the British horticultural industry." The Horticultural Development Company (HDC) is a division of the statutory levy body the Agriculture and Horticulture Development (AHDB) which administers the collection of an industry levy to fund essential near-market research and development for the benefit of UK Horticulture. The collected levy for most crops is 0.5% of annual turnover, the exception being for the mushroom industry. In 2006/7 the total levy collected was 4.9 million. For more details see the Levy pages. With responsibility for over 300 crops in the horticultural industry, the HDC looks after the different crop interests through seven sector Panels: Industry lead researchTo ensure that this near-market R&D is correctly tuned to meet the needs of industry, growers and farmers play a vital role in setting research strategies in each of the crop sectors and in the decision making process for individual research projects. A source of technical informationOf course, for industry to truly benefit from this research it is essential that the results are communicated in an effective and timely manner. The HDC achieves this through the organisation of industry events to update its Members on any advances in research and development. In addition, the HDC publishes a range of factsheets, training DVDs, wall charts, crop walkers guides, software programmes as well as HDC News, HDC's monthly journal.
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