A full day of learning about IPM

27 people attended the recent Regional Field Day held in Dimbulah in Far North Queensland. Growers came from as far as Cooktown and Ayr to attend the day which was the first Field Day for Passionfruit to ever be held in the area.

The guest speakers included Scott Wallace from Growcom who took the group through the Pesticide module of the Hort360 programme which enables growers to benchmark their current practices against other growers within Passionfruit and against the best practice model within Hort360.

The session also included a feature about how growers now get access to new chemicals as the system has changed enormously in the last 5 years.

Finally, Larner & Judith Sugden-Smith, who are new growers and are following organic growing principles, kindly allowed us to visit their farm for a tour.

Look out for the Research Roadshow events which will be focusing on identifying our pest & disease issues in the industry by variety and region to feed into the new Strategic Agrichemical Review Process (SARP) for Passionfruit.