Chemical use Spray diary goes digital

Spray diary goes digital

A new electronic spray diary will be rolled out for the dried grape industry in the lead up to the 2022/23 season.

Dried Fruits Australia has been working collaboratively with processors Sunbeam Foods and Australian Premium Dried Fruits to develop the diary, which will be delivered through the Grapeweb platform.

DFA field officer Stuart Putland said the diary would provide growers with the most up-to-date chemical information and an efficient recordkeeping platform to greatly assist with vineyard management.

“For those growers involved in wine grape production, this will be nothing new, but for the rest of us it will be a big step forward from the old sheet of carbon paper for duplicate recording. “We hope to see the whole industry go digital with its spray records and we will be working with the processors to support growers with the transition from the paper-based system.

“There will be lots more information coming your way before the planned rollout in July this year.”

The project – Creating real-time traceability in the Australian dried fruits supply chain to improve export market maximum residue limit compliance – is being funded by the Australian Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment.

“Current chemical MRL compliance in the industry is reliant on a paperbased, retrospective system to manage the use of chemicals on farm,” Stuart said.

“The aim of this project is to develop and implement an online, real-time system allowing information to flow up and down the supply chain between growers, processors and marketers before the product is even ready for harvest.”

Stuart said the industry was lucky to be able to pick up the system from the wine grape industry, so development time would be relatively short.

“The Grapeweb platform is ideal as it provides live entry of chemical application data, and each entry is immediately checked against an approved list of spray products, withholding periods and resistance management strategies,” he said.

“Information will be available to processors and growers in real time and help is at hand for growers with questions about data entry.” v