ZESPRI is committed to helping growers maximise their orchard profitability and we’re bringing together orchardists, technical staff, consultants and Plant & Food Research scientists to develop and implement best-practice orchard management plans on ‘focus orchards’. Progress will be monitored and shared with the wider industry to demonstrate the outcomes of certain on-orchard decisions.
Funded by ZESPRI and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry Sustainable Farming Fund, the project is an industry learning programme using the focus orchards as demonstration properties to show the different management options available to produce fruit with the attributes desired by our export markets, and the financial implications on the orchard’s bottom-line to producing and supplying such fruit.
It is acknowledged that there is no one single way to run a successful, profitable kiwifruit orchard business but for different management options we want to identify what the measurable effects and the associated costs, benefits and tradeoffs of the different approaches are.
The Focus Orchard Network has been established across the growing regions representing distinct kiwifruit growing environments and management systems, and assist participants in lifting their performance. The management programmes of individual focus orchards are driven by the participating growers with the inputs of specialists to aid planning and implementation of orchard management programmes that will lift orchard performance.