AU: Buz Green takes HAL Graham Gregory award

Horticulture Australia Limited (HAL) announced the winners of the prestigious Graham Gregory and Young Leader awards recently, recognising outstanding contributions to the horticultural industry.

The Graham Gregory award was presented to Buz Green, Executive Chairman of Serve-Ag Pty Ltd, in an elegant awards ceremony held at the Sheraton on the Park in Sydney

Read full article: FreshPlaza.com

HAL - Industry Annual Report

Industry annual reports on various horticultural crops are available from the Horticulture Australia (HAL) site via this link: HAL - Annual Reports.

Autumn Edition of Hortlink

The Autumn edition of Hortlink is available online.  Featuring stories on the HAL Board's visit to Tasmania, outcomes of a citrus thrips project and the potential benefits for other industries, along with a range of other interesting stories relating to activities funded through HAL.

Hortlink can be viewed at this link Hortlink - Autumn Edition.

Australian Plant Geneticist Honoured

The head of a leading Australian plant genetics research centre is South Australia's Scientist of the Year.

Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics chief executive Peter Langridge was honoured by SA Science and Information Economy Minister Tom Kenyon last week.

Mr Kenyon said Prof Langridge had played a key role in plant genomics technology which is critical to ensuring global food security.

"Australia is regarded as a world leader in this technology because of his work and he's an outstanding winner of South Australia's highest award for science," Mr Kenyon said.

The genomics centre is based at Adelaide University's Waite campus with research arms at the universities of Melbourne, Queensland and South Australia.

Most of the research work done centres on developing ways for wheat and barley plants to cope better against environmental stresses, such as drought and salinity, but also focuses on ways to use nutrients more efficiently.

Source: http://www.weeklytimesnow.com.au

Viticulture researcher wins horticulture's top prize

Internationally recognized expert in vine management and vine improvement, Mr Peter Clingeleffer was last night announced the 2010 Graham Gregory Award winner at the Horticulture Australia Limited (HAL) Awards held in Sydney.

Mr Clingeleffer, who currently holds the position of Project Portfolio and Team Leader at CSIRO Plant Industry, has been an enthusiastic and tireless supporter of Australian horticulture for nearly 40 years. He is regarded as an expert in the development of modern practices and improved varieties for dried grape, table grape  and wine grape production with significant worldwide impact at both the scientific and industry adoption levels.

Despite his long-standing career with the CSIRO and his significant contributions to the industry over the years, Mr Clingeleffer was surprised to be given the Graham Gregory Award.

"It was very unexpected and I am absolutely delighted to be honoured with such a recognised industry award," Mr Clingeleffer said.

Australian native trees course offered at the Australian Correspondence School

THE AUSTRALIAN Correspondence School (ACS) holds an Australian native trees course, within its plant varieties and horticulture courses.

According to ACS, the 100 hour course is designed to identify Australian native trees, in addition to seed propagation and germination.

The course covers the range of uses for Australian native trees, and how to better utilise them for landscape applications and biological control of pests and disease.

ACS says the course includes planting and establishing techniques for the trees, in addition to soils, feeding, watering. Participants will learn tree identification and the general characteristics of Australian native trees.

Source: Landscape Design News>

Australia: ACS provides gardening, landscaping and horticulture courses

THE AUSTRALIAN Correspondence School (ACS) says it offers over 150 gardening courses, from short amateur courses to long professional qualification courses.

According to ACS, it has been working in horticulture, gardening and landscaping for the past three decades. Staffs include a dozen qualified and skilled horticultural experts, from across Australia, the UK and New Zealand.

The courses can cover around 100 hours for topics such as growing fruit or vegetables at home and landscaping home gardens.

ACS says the landscaping home garden course is designed to teach you how to design or renovate a home garden and then, how to maintain it. The subjects covered are relevant to both small and large landscapes, suitable for developing a new home garden, or improving an existing one.

The principal of ACS, John Mason is said to have been editor of for garden magazines and is an author of over 40 gardening books.

Source: Landscape Design News>

AU: Leadership forum will build networks among horticultural women

Peak horticulture organisation Growcom will hold a leadership forum for women in horticulture, at its office in Brisbane this Monday 3 August.

Attending the seminar will be 10 growers from a range of commodities including salad vegetables, avocados, herbs, pineapples, mangoes, zucchinis, apples, stone fruit and melons.

Also present will be representatives of Growcom, local government, Queensland Primary Industries and Fisheries, Horticulture Australia Council and the state Department of Employment, Economic Development and Innovation.The aim of the day is to discuss how communication within horticulture can be improved in order to enhance horticultural women’s networks, support systems and their leadership and representative capacity.

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AU: Horticulture growers invited to hear about new IR obligations

Peak horticulture organisation Growcom will this week kick off a series of industrial relations information seminars for fruit and vegetable growers throughout Queensland. The seminars are designed to explain:

• growers’ new legal obligations under the Fair Work Act
• details of the new Horticulture Industry Award 2010 which comes into effect from 1 January 2010
• union right of entry laws
• how to avoid unfair dismissal claims
• strategies and options available to growers under a workplace agreement
• understanding ‘good faith bargaining’ and its part in workplace agreements.

Growcom’s IR Manager Donna Mogg will present the first seminar tomorrow [Tuesday, 28 July] in Bundaberg at the Alloway Country Club, Goodwood Road from 1 pm.

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With ‘Phenomics,’ Plant Scientists Hope to Shift Breeding Into Overdrive

Elizabeth Finkel
Science Magazine

Borrowing imaging techniques from medicine, phenomics offers plant scientists new windows into the inner workings of living plants: infrared cameras to scan temperature profiles, spectroscopes to measure photosynthetic rates, lidar to gauge growth rates, and MRI to reveal root physiology. Institutes worldwide are racing to build facilities with instrument arrays that can scan thousands of plants a day in an approach to science akin to high-throughput DNA sequencing. The Australian Plant Phenomics Facility, a new $40 million venture that is the first national lab of its kind in the world, opened its High Resolution Plant Phenomics Centre in Canberra last week. And other countries are ramping up fast.

Plant of the Day - Anigozanthos (Kangaroo Paw)

Anigozanthos
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Photo: Tall Kangaroo Paw (Anigozanthos flavidus)

Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae
(unranked): Angiosperms
(unranked): Monocots
(unranked): Commelinids
Order: Commelinales
Family: Haemodoraceae
Subfamily: Conostyloideae
Genus: Anigozanthos Labill.
Species: See text.

Anigozanthos is a small genus of Australian plants in the Bloodwort family Haemodoraceae. The 11 species and several subspecies are commonly known as kangaroo paw and catspaw depending on the shape of their flowers. A further species, previously identified as Anigozanthos fuliginosus and commonly known as the Black Kangaroo Paw, has been transferred to its own monotypic genus and is now known as Macropidia fuliginosa.

These perennials are endemic to dry sandy, siliceous areas of southwest Australia, but they occur as well in a variety of other environments and soil types. They are grown commercially in Australia, the United States, Japan and Israel.

The plant grows from short, underground, horizontal rhizomes. The length and the character of these may vary between the species: some are fleshy, others are fragile. The sap in the root system allows the plants to survive extreme dry spells. In summer, a number of species die back to the rhizome, growing back in autumn.

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Australia: Peter Cundall: spring

Peter Cundall
July 22, 2009

AS SPRING gradually approaches we can already see the shapes of things to come. Everywhere are those brittle, bright-green spikes from hidden bulbs, popping up through grass, dead leaves and garden beds. These apparently tender shoots are amazingly tough when it comes to resisting frosts - in fact they love the cold - but they are very much at risk from anyone walking carelessly over parts of the garden. Read more>

Crop of certified chickpea agronomists grows

http://theland.farmonline.com.au

More than 70 agronomists have recently completed Chickpea Certified Agronomist courses across Queensland and New South Wales to meet the growing demand for expert knowledge in the management of the popular crop.

Queensland Primary Industries and Fisheries (QPIF) has teamed up with Pulse Australia and the NSW Department of Primary Industries (DPI) to deliver the chickpea training courses at venues in Emerald, Goondiwindi, Dalby and Narrabri.

QPIF industry development officer for pulses and grain legumes Jayne Gentry said the specialist training was developed eight years ago to ensure agronomists were aware of best management practices.

"Chickpeas have rapidly gained in popularity over the past years, due to their rotational benefits and strong gross margin," she said.

"It is recognised by the industry that, like all pulses, growing chickpeas successfully requires a higher level of management, compared to bulk grains.

"The price received by growers for chickpeas is strongly linked to the planning before planting the crop and its subsequent management and harvest, and this course better equips them for maximum results at harvest."

Ms Gentry said interest in becoming a certified chickpea agronomist was still very strong as there was a continual stream of young agronomists entering the industry, as well as demand from experienced agronomists undertaking the course to further hone their skills.

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"New" fruit holds NQ potential

ACHACHA are an exciting new fruit prospect for Australian growers.


Director of the Achacha Fruit Group, Bruce Hill, worked for five years in Uruguay as a director on the Australia-Latin America Business Council and came across the fruit while on a study of sugarcane-cutting equipment in Bolivia.

Impressed with the fruit, he imported 1kg of achacha to Australia, where he was told by fruiterers that the fruit not only looked good and tasted great, but it had a long shelf life.

The achacha does not ripen further after being picked and will last a week or more without refrigeration.

Bruce's original intention was to import the fruit, but product output in Bolivia was not great enough, so he decided to form the Achacha Fruit Group and establish orchards here in Australia.

Ross Oliveri, Giru, volun-teered his farm for the trial orchard and 3000 trees were planted from imported seed in 2002. In January/February this year, 10t of achacha were har-vested and marketed in Sydney, selling out in a short time.

Achacha are an egg-sized fruit up to 6cm long and 4cm in diameter and are related to the mangosteen family of fruits, but are not as sweet as the mango-steen. The trees take just seven years to fruit, compared to the 12 years for mangosteen. They are now being viewed as a replace-ment for mangosteen. There is usually one significant coffee-coloured seed, but larger fruit may have more than one seed.



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