Tree Crop News

Pome fruit - Stone Fruit - Featured Crop

New apple makes a ‘magic’ debut in 2025

Just three years after its first commercial plantings, 2025 marked a major milestone for the Fruit Australia Group with the debut of its first early volumes of Sunrise Magic apples.

Pome fruit - Stone Fruit - Featured Crop

New option for Botrytis control in cherries

Botrytis grey mould ( Botrytis cinerea ) has long been overlooked as the cause of serious fruit losses, in an industry that has consistently battled brown rot ( Monilinia spp.).

Pome fruit - Stone Fruit - apple - Featured Crop

Bravo apples win best fresh snack award

It’s official – Bravo apples, the distinctive burgundy apples grown throughout Australia, are winning over fans on the east coast this spring, having been named one of Australia’s healthiest snacks.

Pome fruit - Stone Fruit - Featured Crop

AgTech solutions for narrow orchard systems in Western Australia

Two-dimensional (2D) multileader narrow orchards, characterised by tightly spaced rows (typically 2-2.5m) with planar cordon canopy training, are emerging as the future of modern fruit production to meet the challenges of labour shortage, resource efficiency, and sustainability

Pome fruit - Stone Fruit - Featured Crop

Refrigerated cargo keeps everything – and everyone – cool

As the lead carrier brand for the CMA CGM Group in Oceania, ANL knows how important it is your stone fruit stays top quality whether you are shipping cherries, peaches, plums, apricots - or any stone fruit.

Pome fruit - Featured Crop

A very happy place

Anthony Rullo had little experience in producing his own cherries (despite growing up surrounded by a cherry orchard) until three years ago when he embraced the opportunity to plant his own trees and simultaneously trial some cutting-edge technology.

Pome fruit - Featured Crop

Netting, rain cover and solar innovations to protect orchard crops

Protecting orchard crops from hail, rain and excessive sunlight is becoming increasingly important to avoid fruit damage. Hail and extreme heat events appear to be more common as our climate is changing and rain spoilage is an ongoing issue in stone fruit crops, particularly cherry.

Pome fruit - Featured Crop

Packaging (MAP) for stone fruit export

By John Lopresti and Glenn Hale - horticultural consultants Fruitful Insights Australian stone fruit is exported by both air and sea freight typically in plastic film liners ranging from perforated high humidity (HH) bags to modified atmosphere packaging (MAP).

Pome fruit - Featured Crop

Nutrient management for pome fruit

Australian Pear & Apple Limited says the key to a targeted approach to nutrient management is understanding your soil, leaf composition and nutrient levels in fruit pre-harvest.

Pome fruit - Stone Fruit

Hydrorock subsurface water saving technology

Developed by a Dutch company, Hydrorock is an innovative subsurface water saving technology composed of blocks of mineral wool - a rock-based mineral material made into a matted fibre buried in the ground and designed to deliver an optimum and constant supply of water to tree crops.

Cherries - Pome fruit - Stone Fruit

Future is cherry ripe for very happy family orchard

Kyabram orchardists Anthony Rullo and Alexandra Milosevich see embracing innovative water saving technologies as the key to their future after establishing a 5ha cherry orchard on a property just outside of Kyabram in July 2022.

Pome fruit - Insect & mite control

Vayego all the go for South West WA orchards with weevils

Limited chemical control options and high reliance on the Group 22a insecticide, indoxacarb, for control of weevils in pome and stone fruit orchards throughout South West WA, has always meant a new option was going to be enthusiastically welcomed.

Pome fruit - Stone Fruit

Thinning strategies for European pears

Many European pear cultivars crop heavily and require thinning to ensure regular yields and optimise fruit quality. However, compared with apple, there is limited information available on how to best manage crop loads, particularly the newer cultivars.

Avocado - Pome fruit - Stone Fruit

Bringing home the Bacon at Barham Avocados

When it comes to avocado trees, Tim and Katrina Myers have been blazing a trail along the Murray at Barham, NSW, through droughts, floods, pandemics, global financial crises, good crops and, well, some not so good.

Pome fruit - Stone Fruit

Minimal impact of phytosanitary irradiation

Global trade enables the movement of seasonally fresh produce between countries.