How a practical need within a South African research company grew into a digital platform supporting cultivar evaluation around the world.
Culteva™ did not begin as a software business looking for a problem to solve. It began with a problem that Provar’s researchers and evaluators understood first-hand.
Every growing season produces an enormous amount of information. Measurements taken in orchards, observations recorded in laboratories, photographs, fruit quality assessments and years of trial results all contribute to understanding how a cultivar performs.
But collecting this information is only part of the challenge. Keeping it organised, scientifically consistent and accessible across different sites and seasons is another matter entirely.
For Provar, solving this challenge became the starting point for Culteva™.
Built from scientific necessity
Provar is an independent South African horticultural research and cultivar evaluation company. Its work helps breeders, growers, cultivar owners and other industry stakeholders make informed decisions about new fruit cultivars and rootstocks.
Through scientific evaluations conducted in orchards, laboratories and postharvest facilities, Provar investigates how different plant materials perform under real growing conditions. Its findings help reduce the risks associated with cultivar selection, commercial development and planting decisions.
As its evaluation activities expanded, so did the complexity of managing the resulting data.
Provar needed a more effective way to collect observations in the field, maintain consistent evaluation methodologies, organise information across multiple trials and turn that information into meaningful reports.
Rather than adapting generic data collection software to accommodate highly specialised scientific workflows, Provar began developing its own solution in 2017.
That solution became Culteva™.
Developed by evaluators, for evaluators
What makes Culteva™ distinctive is the environment in which it was developed.
The platform was shaped by people who understood cultivar evaluation because they were conducting it themselves. Its functionality evolved around practical requirements, from recording observations directly in the orchard to linking photographs with samples, following standardised evaluation protocols and generating reports from collected data.
Today, Culteva™ remains an important part of Provar’s daily operations. It supports the scientific work conducted by its evaluation teams, providing the digital infrastructure through which measurements and observations become structured, traceable information.
This close connection between software development and practical research continues to influence the platform.
Miaan Kramer, Culteva™ Product Manager, described the underlying objective in an interview:
“We want to free our clients from the tedious administrative tasks in order to focus on the important things like decision-making.”
Working alongside Provar’s researchers and evaluators, Miaan and Lead Software Engineer Conrad Janse van Rensburg continue to develop the platform around evolving scientific requirements, user feedback and opportunities for technological improvement.
Crucially, the objective has never been to replace scientific judgement. It is to give evaluators better tools with which to apply it.
From an internal solution to an international platform
What began as a solution to Provar’s own operational challenges has developed into something much broader.
Today, Culteva™ serves independent evaluation organisations, breeders, cultivar owners and other horticultural businesses internationally, allowing them to manage their own evaluation programmes using the same underlying principles of consistency, traceability and scientific rigour.
Organisations can structure evaluation protocols around their requirements, capture data across sites and seasons and develop reports that support their own research and commercial decisions.
The platform continues to evolve through collaboration with its users, whose different crops, environments and evaluation methodologies help inform new capabilities.
For Peter Allderman, former TopFruit manager and consultant specialising in plant breeders’ rights and fruit-variety management, two particularly valuable benefits are ownership of confidential evaluation data and the time saved by having photographs linked to evaluations as they are captured. As he explains, this efficiency alone means the software effectively pays for itself.
These practical benefits are what continue to drive development: making good scientific evaluation easier to conduct, manage and communicate.
Taking the conversation beyond South Africa
In March 2026, I had the opportunity to present Culteva™ at the 17th EUFRIN Apple & Pear Working Group meeting in Belgium, alongside researchers and specialists working in cultivar evaluation across Europe.
The discussions reinforced how familiar many of these challenges are, regardless of where evaluations take place.
How do we maintain consistency between evaluators? How can results from different locations and seasons be meaningfully compared? And how do we make scientific information easier to access, interpret and share?
These are questions that shaped the original development of Culteva™ and continue to guide its future.
It was particularly rewarding to see a platform born from the practical needs of a South African research team contributing to conversations about the future of cultivar evaluation internationally.
See what Culteva™ could do for your organisation
Culteva™ has grown considerably since its beginnings at Provar, but its purpose remains unchanged: to make scientifically robust evaluation more practical, efficient and accessible.
Whether you manage evaluations across multiple locations, need a more reliable way to organise your data or simply want to spend less time on administration, we would welcome the opportunity to learn about your work.
We offer free, no-obligation demonstrations tailored to your organisation’s evaluation workflow.
There is no commitment required. Just an opportunity to explore your current challenges, ask questions and see whether Culteva™ could make a meaningful difference to the way you work.
YOUR NEXT STEP
See Culteva™ in Action
Discover how Culteva™ can simplify your cultivar evaluations, streamline data collection and support more efficient reporting. Book a free, obligation-free demonstration with our team.
Gina is Sales and Marketing Manager at Provar and leads market-facing communication and commercial engagement for the Culteva platform. Her role focuses on positioning Culteva clearly and credibly within the evaluation software landscape, translating product capabilities and evaluation methodology into accessible narratives for industry audiences. Alongside this, she contributes to Provar’s editorial and brand outputs, with a strong emphasis on clarity, consistency and long-term credibility.
