NEWS –
Extension News
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Regional Forum’s exciting return Liz Singh, Avocados Australia Industry Development Manager
After a year of talking to people via computer the Avocado industry development and extension (AV17005) team got the green light to meet face to face. South Queensland strongly supported the return of the Regional Forum in Crows Nest on Wednesday March 24 with 111 growers and industry members participating. AV17005 project lead Simon Newett, from the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, said it was great to see that the Avocado Industry Development and Extension project was valued so highly by the industry. “It’s great that we can get back to delivering in-person events, helping growers to improve best practice,” he said. Avocados Australia CEO John Tyas provided an industry update that highlighted the industry importance of growers completing the annual Avocados Australia OrchardInfo survey. John indicated that the national tree crop map run by the University of New England showed considerably more hectares planted to avocados than were recorded in the OrchardInfo report. “Without an accurate picture of avocado plantings by region and age, it makes it harder to forecast the industry production capacity which can create a window of opportunity for imports,” he said. The OrchardInfo tree census link will be emailed in August/ September. If you haven’t previously received the Avocados Australia census email, please contact us on 07 3846 6566 or admin2@avocado.org.au. Read about the information presented on the Implementing best practice of avocado fruit management and handling practices from farm to ripening (AV18000) and Monitoring avocado quality at retail (AV19003) on pages 55 and 19 respectively. At the Crows Nest event, industry members also heard from Hort Innovation Head of Extension Jane Wightman, who provided an informative update on the R&D corporation’s
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new extension program. This program is designed to complement existing industryspecific extension and communication projects, with Hort Innovation’s regional extension managers playing a linking role and bring broad coalitions together to share skills and capacity, to solve identified regional problems. Read more on page 15. Jane is the head of the new ‘Extension and adoption’ team recently started at Hort Innovation, and she outlined several of the RDC’s current activities, including: 1. sustainability plans – various industries are developing these. Consumers are now looking for this type of information (including an industry’s efforts to reduce food waste) before they buy 2. Hort Innovation is currently assisting industries (including the avocado industry) to renew their Strategic Industry Plans. These are prepared for five year periods and outline the aims of the R&D and marketing for the next five years 3. the importance of industry statistics. The main topic “avocado nutrition” was presented by Liz Singh (Avocados Australia Industry Development Manager) who dashed everyone’s hopes of a quick fix when she stated that avocado nutrition was complicated, that it was not stationary or repeatable, it required continual monitoring and quick changes to match nutrient requirements to crop load, health and future cropping opportunities. Liz said that there were seven areas that she would consider when looking at avocado nutrition (Figure 1). Yet, she said that having a better understanding of what happens to fertiliser when it is added to the soil in terms of nutrient interaction and retention could provide the opportunity to maximise nutrient efficiency and avocado nutrition to maintain tree health, support fruit growth and optimise tree function. Not being able to see what happens to your fertiliser when you add it to the soil doesn’t mean that you can’t stitch together a good picture of what is happening with information from your soil test and a basic understanding of soil chemistry. Your soil pH will determine availability of nutrients, your
TALKING AVOCADOS AUTUMN 2021
