I attended the Australian Society of Horticultural Science’s session on The Future of Horticulture on behalf of Passionfruit Australia and I came away from my afternoon utterly inspired by what I saw.

The program was a very full one, with a broad range of speakers both in field and in experience.  The opening session featured Neena Mitter – Director, Centre for Horticultural Science, Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation (QAAFI) – giving a very enthusiastic talk about the Horticulture of Tomorrow – Innovative, Vibrant and sustainable.  Neena’s recent work includes the recently patent protected BioClay (non-GM, non-toxic, sustainable spray for protecting crops by using clay nanoparticles to deliver RNA interference) and using plant stem cells for cloning avocado plants to produce rootstock plants that are genetically identical to the parent stock.

BioClay has the potential to change the game completely for pest management in horticulture, providing a totally environmentally friendly, non-residual way of defeating plant pests at the individual pest and host plant level. Read more about BioClay here.

Julie O’Halloran from QDAF then provided a very insightful overview about developments in Precision Horticulture. She talked about some of the newer techniques available to assist with reducing costs by providing better information about soil variability and using precision monitoring and dosing to add nutrients or soil improvement only where it is actually needed across a growing paddock.

The audience was then treated to a vision of the future of Vertical farms and future grain production from Graeme Smith.  As we all know, protected cropping is quite cost prohibitive for many crops, however, Graeme opened our minds to the potential in future for ‘multi-story’ box farms where 100’s of acres of crops are grown in a vertical farm with a relatively small footprint and a large amount of hi-tech equipment. Think hydroponics on massive doses of steroids!

The following session was the most inspiring forty minutes I have spent in a long time.  I had the pleasure of listening to 8 presentations – each with just one visual slide and three minutes of verbal accompaniment – from the PhD students of today who are shaping the next generation of horticultural research for all of our tomorrow’s. There is just one word I can use to describe these young people and that is INCREDIBLE!  Topics ranged from “Dear Avocado, why won’t you root?” to “Size does matter” and each and every presentation was delivered with gusto and the energy that only young people can summon up!

The afternoon continued with a whole series of short talks on topics as wide-ranging as managing bio-security risk in Bananas to H2Orticulture.  The afternoon wrapped up with an update from the State Ag representative from each of the major Hort states talking about developments in their own region.

I feel really confident that the future of Horticulture is in safe hands – but I would very actively encourage everyone in our industry to not be complacent.  The larger industries like Avocados and Mangoes have huge amounts of momentum behind them.  We don’t. Yet.  Now is the time to get more involved in the future of OUR industry so we can shape its’ future together.

Join in the upcoming Regional Field Day in Bundaberg on July 25th.

Get involved in our Export Sub-Committee at the first meeting in Bundaberg on July 24th.

It’s our future – let’s shape it together.