Vale Brian Watson 1937-2020

Tony Whiley, Sunshine Horticultural Services

Brian was born and raised in Dunedin, New Zealand and graduated with a Bachelor of Horticulture degree from Lincoln College, Canterbury University in the late 1950s. His horticultural interests were in subtropical and tropical fruit crops, spices and vegetables leaving New Zealand in 1962 for employment in Sabah as an agronomist with the UN Special Fund Labuk Valley Natural Resources Project followed by a term in Sarawak where he worked as an agronomist for the UN and Sarawak Department of Agriculture developing tropical food crops.

In late 1968, Brian was appointed as a Research Horticulturist with the then Queensland Department of Primary Industries at Nambour, primarily working with pineapples. In 1974 he accepted a promotion to shift to the wet tropics horticulture program based at Kamerunga horticultural research station (HRS), located a short distance from Cairns. During the 17 years at Kamerunga HRS, Brian involved himself with “hands-on” research with an enormous range of tropical fruits, nuts, spices that included bananas, pineapples, mangoes, avocados, lychees, longans, pummelo, custard apples, passionfruit, durians, mangosteens, rambutans, breadfruits, carambolas, grapes, papaya, jackfruit, chempedak, abiu, star apple, langsat, sapodilla, coconut, cashew, macadamia and turmeric.

He was an avid collector of new varieties across all species and was responsible for enriching the subtropical and tropical genetic material we have available today through overseeing the importation of improved varieties from the subtropical and tropical regions of the world. Some of these varieties found commercial success while others have been used in breeding programs with successful outcomes.

Brian is remembered by the North Queensland avocado industry for the significant role he played in establishing Shepard as a mainstream variety in Australia. In the late 1970s, he took great interest in the fledgling Atherton Tablelands avocado industry at a time when farmers were being discouraged from tobacco production. The climate and soils of the area were favourable for production and early maturing of avocados during a period of low market supply (February to April), provided orchardists with an attractive commercial opportunity. The mainstream varieties at the time were Fuerte and Rincon, both of which had thin skins making them highly susceptible to spoilage from pests and diseases. Brian accessed Shepard budwood from Maroochy Horticultural Research Station at Nambour for evaluation in North Queensland and distributed trees to a number of interested growers across the Tablelands. Having a thicker skin, with greater pest and disease resistance and early maturing fruit, its potential was quickly recognised and within a short time Shepard replaced Fuerte and Rincon as the variety of choice for northern production for the February to April timeslot.

All sectors of the Australian avocado industry owe a great debt of gratitude, to a perceptive and enthusiastic horticulturist who helped establish what has become a very successful variety, filling an important role in the avocado industry in Australia. We extend our sincere sympathy to Brian’s wife Agnes and children Barbara and Andrew in their very sad loss.