National and international recognition: The Productivity Promotion Council of Australia presented team members with an award for their contribution to efficient fruit production, and an award for a method of producing peach trees from cuttings to enable orchardists to grow their own peach trees quickly and cheaply.

Fruit thinning strategies: The combination of heavy thinning and water deficits is a strategy that can be employed during water restrictions.

The codling moth is favoured by warm, dry growing conditions between spring and autumn.
Eggs are laid around dusk when the temperature is 16C or higher and the air is calm.

Summer trunk canker is more common during prolonged wet, windy spring and summer seasons on soils that are poorly drained.

Extreme temperatures affect fruit trees and lately, the weather has been all over the place.
It can be difficult for plants to recover after damaging weather conditions such as excessive heat, hail, frost and flood.

With the cool start to the season, we are seeing several fruit tree crops slow in moving through their phenological stages.

Losses in fruit production can be due to inadequate plant nutrition.
Diseases such as tip burn, blossom end rot and bitter pit are all caused by calcium deficiency.

“The establishment of Screen Duo and Photon 500SG as frontline management tools has been a game changer for tree fruit growers in recent years,” said Jim Lyons of Sipcam.

Unfortunately the answers to many questions about why and how fruit trees grow and produce fruit are found in scientific journals. These are not written for orchardists.

Apply research findings to commercial orchard conditions: To encourage commercial adoption of the Tatura Trellis as a fully integrated system of orchard management, we did the following:
Scientific papers published in international horticulture and soil science journals, and conference presentations, were re-written for grower magazines, chapters in books, Technotes, DAV Research Reports and newspaper articles.