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AMS News Bulletin Winter 2019

The winter edition of 2019 features orchard productivity and business management.

With all thoughts on a successful harvest, we talk to Matt Roche about how to select and manage grass cover in the orchard to improve productivity. Keiran King describes to key features to look out for when buying growing media for nursery tree stock to give your trees the best start in life. We talk to Bruce Green and Hendrik Joubert about the importance of keeping water up to young trees to maximise their long-term productivity. Brendan O’Brien from Local Land Services puts a call out for anyone in the Richmond River with an erosion management action plan to get in touch about funding opportunities.

Also in this edition we talk to Amiee Thomas about the Farm Tracker system they use in their day-to-day business operations to track crop losses. For those of you who missed the workshop on environmental monitoring, we sum up Leoni’s presentation on how environmental data can improve your business. With work health and safety a key aspect of any business, we provide a summary of your responsibilities and an update on WHS laws.

Purchasing nursery trees for an orchard is the single biggest investment growers will make, so we are excited to present the nursery tree specifications which have been developed with the Nursery & Garden Industry Australia and industry representatives.

With winter on the way we talk to Janus Erasmus and Chris Cook about different ways to combat frost damage in the orchard.

In this edition we also have a wrap-up of the first-ever MacGroup held in Yamba, information on the 2018 season benchmarking project findings, and the latest marketing research on ice cream. We also profile Bruce and Liz Green, pioneering macadamia growers on the Clarence floodplain.

Our regular R&D feature includes an article on the different mistletoes affecting macadamias, an update on Hidden Valley Plantations’ A-series varieties; and the results of a study that found that most nuts come from cross-pollination. 

Article authors include: Jolyon Burnett, Leoni Kojetin, Lynne Ziehlke, Donella Andersen and Denise Bond, AMS; Jamie Zapp, Netafim; Brendan O’Brien, Local Land Services; Matt Roche, Australian Sports Turf Consultants; Keiran King, Rocky Point; Aimee Thomas, Falkirk Farm; Janus Erasmus, GridFarm; Stephen Trueman, University of the Sunshine Coast; David Bell, Hidden Valley Plantations.


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Supported by Hort Innovation and Macadamia Fund

This website has been partly funded by Hort Innovation, using the macadamia research and development levy and contributions from the Australian Government.