With poor spray practice contributing to pesticide resistance, and costing growers both time and money, getting spraying right is critical.
In partnership with A Lighter Touch (ALT) programme partners, ALT is hosting a series of educational spray workshops across New Zealand, from mid-June, focusing on helping growers achieve effective spray coverage.
Spray expert, David Manktelow of Applied Research Technologies will lead the workshops, which will involve practical demonstrations and will discuss spraying in the context of an integrated and sustainable control programme.
The workshops will focus on best practice, achieving effective spray coverage, and the calibration of spray equipment. Content will be tailored to crop types in terms of discussion around the spray mix, application and equipment.
Attendees will gain credits towards their renewal of their Growsafe certificate through attendance at the workshops.
David Manktelow, from Applied Research Technologies will lead the workshops.
The first workshop will focus on field crops and will be held at the Pukekohe Research and Demonstration Farm on June 18. Other workshops are planned for covered crops, tabletop strawberries, wine grapes, evergreen tree crops, deciduous tree crops (both planar and central leader systems) and boysenberries. Dates and locations of these workshops are being finalised and will be shared on the ALT website, in upcoming ALT and sector group newsletters and on the ALT LinkedIn page.
In addition to the ALT-organised workshops, ALT is also supporting spray events being held by the Foundation for Arable Research (FAR) for field crops and by Zespri for kiwifruit. The Zespri workshops are being held in June and are open to other attendees from other ALT sectors. Further information and registration will be available here on the Zespri website as details are confirmed.
The FAR workshops, with presenters Tom Wolf and Jason Deveau of Canadian site Sprayers 101, will be held in August across ten North and South Island locations. Further information and registration will be available in the events section of the FAR website closer to the time.
Registration for all events is essential. Please visit the spray workshops event page for more information and registration details.
