Back in ca. 1999 the late Mr. Aad Den Haan, director of agro testing laboratory Relab Den Haan (currently: Eurofins Scientific) asked me to accompany him, to solve a problem at a chili pepper nursery.
He picked me up from home with his nice car and along the way briefed me about the problem.
When we arrived, the chili grower / owner showed the plants in his glasshouse.
The problem was obvious: the plants looked OK, but ALL plants carried malformed fruits.
Indeed this was a serious problem. For weeks, his entire greenhouse yielded nothing but inferior peppers – a costly setback, as he missed premium prices at the start of the harvesting season and desperately needed the income to recover his investment.
The cause was a mystery. Relab Den Haan had run all kinds of soil analysis trying to spot the cause. This was a renowned, certified laboratory, with high-educated employees, and state of the art equipment for soil sample analysis, for both nutrients and pathogens. (How could I outperform them?)
For about 25 minutes I wandered between the plants, searching for clues.
I couldn’t find any, actually.
Asking questions to the grower also didn’t result in any leads. He had seed propagated the plants himself, but I couldn’t imagine that would be an issue here.
Then I looked up, through the roof vents, into the blue sky, to clear my mind.
As I did, in a flash I realized I had found the piece of the puzzle that explained everything.
The glasshouse boiler further along was malfunctioning. It was producing ethylene gas that spread through the CO2 pipes into the whole greenhouse. The ethylene caused early ripening and malformation of the peppers. Without any doubt. It all made sense. This should never have happened, with regular maintenance of the boiler.
A 100% certain of my analysis, I urged the grower to arrange a boiler inspection.
The very next day a service technician confirmed my thesis and fixed the problem.
Within a few weeks the healthy harvest returned.
Another happy client.
Concluding Thoughts
This case proves my wide reference framework, covering various disciplines, enables me to solve very rare problems that other consultancy firms were not able to solve.