Innovative fruit production systems for peach and nectarine in Australia and Southeast Asia

Abstract

New training and trellising systems are being developed for temperate fruits in Australia. The most productive and efficient trellising system with improved fruit quality appears to be the open Tatura system. Poor fruit size is a major problem of early-season cultivars. Crop-loading studies have established indices, such as fruit number per canopy surface and butt cross-sectional area, to provide a simple guide for optimum fruit thinning levels. Best management practices have been developed for the use of growth retardants, for optimising leaf nitrogen concentrations and for controlling rates of timing of irrigation. Regulated deficit irrigation (RDI) improves fruit sugar concentrations by restricting water application during stage II of fruit growth. RDI can also be used after harvest to restrict vegetative growth and enhance floral bud differentiation. New pest and disease control measures are being developed using a new generation of fruit fly bait products. These ‘soft’ insecticides, such as Spinosad (Dow AgroSciences), are used in significantly lower concentrations and have lower mammalian toxicity, than the organophosphates currently registered for use in baits in Australia. In addition to bait sprays, fruit fly exclusion netting has proven to be highly effective in eliminating fruit fly and many other insect pests from the orchard. This type of netting has been shown to increase sugar concentrations of peach and nectarine fruit by as much as 30%. Economic analyses have shown that the break-even point can be reduced from 10 to six years using these new production systems.