The verdant orchards of Bay of Plenty are known for their abundant kiwifruit, avocados and citrus. Growing numbers of blueberry orchards are also contributing to the Bay’s bounty.
Numerous Fruitfed Supplies personnel contribute to the fruitful harvests achieved by the region’s growers. With stores in Katikati, Te Puke and Whakatane, a range of products and services is readily available.
Underpinning every aspect of Fruitfed Supplies’ operations in Bay of Plenty is the desire to ensure field and store personnel are equipped with the right knowledge – or know the right person to ask – to support growers to produce highly marketable crops.
Dr Elaine Gould (PhD) is the Technical Specialist for subtropical crops. Among her responsibilities is working alongside the Fruitfed Supplies Research and Development (R&D) team to share their trial findings with other staff and growers.
“We help everyone understand the nuances of product use, such as application timing or understanding when an application is safe to use or not,” says Elaine. “Another of my tasks is to cover regionally relevant horticultural basics with our Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) and take them out into orchards for further training. We work with our local THRs, providing more detailed, crop-specific training. If there’s an urgent or unusual situation, we get together in an online meeting to discuss and share technical advice, and all THRs can call for advice to support their growers at any time.”
Elaine and fellow Technical Specialists in other regions act as a conduit between industry bodies and the THRs and their growers, providing product guidelines and advice.
“This information can include Fruitfed Supplies R&D results from trials conducted by our Technical Advisors and providing up to date spray and nutrition programmes. We also support the ag-chem companies investing in the research by providing them with another R&D option to gather the necessary data to register new products. We actively work to keep up to date on industry needs and can work with the ag-chem suppliers to identify potential products for local R&D programmes.”
Helping growers produce market-compliant crops is the goal of Anton Herselman, Crop Monitoring Coordinator for Bay of Plenty. With eight scouts from Whakatane to Whitianga, Anton’s team are experts at finding beneficial and pest insects and diseases in avocados, limes, lemons, kiwifruit and blueberries.
“Most markets require growers to know the pest and disease status on their orchard and then apply sprays only when thresholds are met,” says Anton. “Our Crop Monitoring team is here to help growers follow best practice guidelines and enable their fruit to be suitable to go to as many markets as possible. Packhouses are looking for that kind of flexibility and you need reliable crop monitoring and record keeping to meet these requirements.”
Anton describes the monitoring scouts as friendly faces with great knowledge of the target pests and diseases. “Our scouts are on orchards all the time, talking with growers. If they spot anything unusual, they’ll let you know. Another pair of eyes looking over your crop as it matures is always a good thing.”
