New Zealand and Australian horticulture have areas of common interest where sharing knowledge and collaborating can potentially benefit growers on both sides of the ditch.
That’s the view of A Lighter Touch programme manager Sarah Sorensen, who joined the Vegetables New Zealand Brisbane Tour of Learning in June. The tour was sponsored by Fruitfed Supplies Ltd, Valagro+Syngenta and Te Ahikawariki Vegetable Industry Centre of Excellence.
“Like us, the Australian horticulture industry is wanting to move towards a more integrated approach to crop protection, and this provides vast opportunities for knowledge sharing and collaboration between our industries,” Sarah says.
Along with three large growing operations, the tour also visited the Gatton Smart Farm, a $9 million Queensland Government and Hort Innovation initiative to drive agtech adoption across supply chains by transforming the Gatton Research facility into a world-class Smart Farm for horticulture.
Sarah says it was pleasing to see that the way A Lighter Touch has structured the programme’s demonstration sites mirrors the approach being taken in Australia.
“Although the Gatton Smart Farm is focused on technologies, such as smart sprayers and other tech, rather than specific crop protection trials, the principles for the demonstration sites are similar. Growers want to see the technology working before adopting it themselves. This de-risks it for them.”
The ecorobotix ARA, ultra-high precision robotic weed sprayer, being demonstrated at the Gatton Smart Farm. It reduces agchem use by up to 95% as it can distinguish between the weeds and the crop. Credit Sarah Sorenson.
The tour provided an opportunity to make connections with researchers and projects which can inform work occurring within the A Lighter Touch programme. These included a project seeking an integrated pest management approach to nematodes in sweet potato, use of UVC technology in a protected cropping environment with strawberries and zucchini, and the opportunity to be included in twice yearly updates on the latest in agtech around the world that is of relevance to crop protection.
“It was also valuable spending time with sector partners and growers who are part of the A Lighter Touch programme, including three of our biodiversity project champion growers who are helping to extend knowledge from project in their vegetable growing regions,” Sarah says.
