Upcoming PIPS3 Orchard Walks and Talks
Who doesn’t like having a chat over a few charcoaled sausages with some of Australia’s leading apple and pear R&D personnel on a pleasant autumn or winter’s day? Is it valued time because of the feed of grub, or the information feed? Whatever your motivation, the PIPS3 Program is providing upcoming opportunities across growing regions to meet and discuss local challenges with growers and advisors, and how recent research findings and solutions may apply to each region, through researcher walks and talks or local partnership events being held from late March to early June.
As PIPS3 Program Coordinator, Marguerite White explains, the events are where the outcomes of Hort Innovation’s apple and pear research and development levy, Agriculture Victoria and the Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture’s funded work over the last three years of PIPS3, and even previous PIPS iterations, will come together.
“These days are a great opportunity for PIPS3 Program researchers to share outcomes directly with growers. Conducting over half of PIPS3 during Covid restrictions was a challenge, and we have learnt that many in the industry have appreciated the ongoing updates through AFG, Industry Juice, some of the regional Future Orchards® walks and the many videos released via social media. But now it’s time to discuss the outcomes in the orchard with growers, service providers and researchers from Agriculture Victoria and the Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture.
Each event will feature a different make-up of the research team, dependent on focus topics that have been determined for each region, with local front line advisors who have coordinated local demonstration sites as part of the AP19006 (Soil health and nutrition) project, and Mastrus ridens release sites as a part of the AP19002 (IPDM) project more recently.
“The researchers will be there to discuss and provide insight into topics such as developments in orchard system design, addressing climate challenges, managing crop load and biennial bearing, options for orchard floor management, improving soil health, optimising nutrient use and the release of the new nutrient and irrigation decision tool, SINATA, IPDM options for cultural and biological management, and the potential of advanced sensing technologies. Some sites will also participate in the highly anticipated Mastrus ridens release to biologically control codling moth,” Marguerite said, “It will be a real melting pot of topics, discussion points and innovative ideas.”
Local details on speakers, location and registration will be made available closer to each regional event via local frontline advisors and grower group. Watch out for this information! The events are:
- 23 March: Goulburn Valley Horticulture Field Day, Agriculture Tatura SmartFarm (10am–3pm)
- 26 April: Nashdale Hall Cargo Road Nashdale, NSW 2800 (1pm–4pm)
- 24 May: Grove, Huon Valley, Tasmania (11am–1pm)
- 30 May: Adelaide Hills, South Australia (9am–1pm)
- 1 June: Manjimup, Western Australia (10am–3pm)
- 15–16 June: Fruit Growers Tasmania Annual Conference, Launceston, fruitgrowerstas.org.au/conference2023
Get more information on the researchers who will be involved and the topics that will be covered for your local region by watching this video: https://youtu.be/61Din8OAPpw
Visit the PIPS3 Program webpage: https://apal.org.au/programs/more-industry-programs/pips3program/
