Precision orchards

Precision Summerfruit Orchards (SF23000)

  • developing profitable management strategies for Summerfruit growers

Technology in the Stonefruit research orchards at Tatura

Researchers at Agriculture Victoria are testing technologies to determine their application to support research, automation and on-farm capability.

  • AI
  • Mobile sensing
  • UAV
  • Fruit imaging and sorting
Learn more
Production research

Summerfruit production research

Research focused on Production, Harvest, & Post-harvest

Video: Research and results for Summerfruit Industry from the Horticulture toolresources YouTube channel. (14 min 37 Sec)

00:00 Introduction
00:30 Production research
05:44 In the field technology
07:53 Harvest - Post harvest maturity
08:42 Export research

Agriculture Victoria, with the support of the Summerfruit industry and Horticulture Innovation Australia, is investigating future production systems to increase productivity and grower returns through improved eating quality and consumer satisfaction.

Profitable Stonefruit Newsletters

30 May 2022

  • NATIONAL ROADSHOW video recording of presentation on the stonefruit orchard research results
  • Big data: Mobile sensing in orchards

11 March 2022

Production research results

  • Results from the experiments for the 2021-2022 season from the Stonefruit research orchard, Tatura SmartFarm

14 December 2021

Summerfruit production research results

Videos - results of:

  • canopy research
  • rootstock research
  • cropload research
  • irrigation research

18 October 2021

Supply Chain Research

  • Preconditioning fruit to reduce storage disorders
  • Cultivar performance for export
  • Predicting impacts on fruit quality
  • Effect of air freight temperature on fruit quality
  • How to use monitoring technologies
  • Using remote loggers to monitor temperatures of export fruit

9 September 2021

Webinars recorded from recent summerfruit industry events

  • August - webinar 1: Production research, Ag Tech research
  • September - webinar 2: Supply chain research

17 June 2021

Grower Protocols - Current recommendations and guidelines

  • Rootstock performance
  • Irrigation protocols
  • Canopy design options
  • Crop load management

12 April 2021

  • Canopy - Crop load study
  • Rootstock - Crop load study
  • Deficit irrigation study

10 November 2020

  • Stonefruit Cultivar Performance and more

4 November 2020

  • Stonefruit Delayed Cooling

27 October 2020

  • Using real-time loggers and dashboards. Includes Video from Summerfruit webinar series 2020 'Managing fruit for export quality'
  • Video interview: Monitoring fruit temperature during export (Rowan Little, Chief Innovation Officer at Montague)

13 October 2020

  • Summerfruit research improves fruit quality for domestic & export markets
  • New DA meter software to make using the DA meter easier, & help determine fruit harvest timing
  • DA meter database - 20 cultivars
  • Measuring fruit maturity with the DA meter

25 September 2020

  • Grower Protocols, and results of field and fruit quality 2016-2020, for:
  1. Stonefruit canopy & crop load experiments
  2. Stonefruit rootstock experiments
  3. Irrigation experiments
Orchard management

Summerfruit orchard management

Orchard from the air

An aerial view of Agriculture Victoria's Stonefruit Research Orchard at the Tatura SmartFarm

video
Harvest / Post harvest

Harvest & post-harvest research

Stonefruit maturity and fruit quality

The research project, SF15001 Comparing Stonefruit ripening, quality and volatile composition, was funded by Agriculture Victoria with co-investment from Horticulture Innovation Australia Limited using the Summerfruit levy and funds from the Australian Government.

Stonefruit harvest maturity impacts fruit quality

Christine Frisina from Agriculture Victoria discusses how important it is to have ethylene production occurring in stonefruit prior to harvest. This ensures high quality fruit get to customers.

video: Harvest maturity impacts fruit quality

Consumer preference research

Full copies of the consumer preference research reports are available to levy payers and members of Summerfruit Australia

Summerfruit Australia
Researchers & events

Researchers and grower meetings

Meet the researchers involved in stronefruit science.

See the events that growers and industry members can attend (includes information from past events).

Stonefruit grower events

Stonefruit Research Roadshows highlighting research from the Stonefruit research orchard in Tatura and research from Agribiosciences, Bundoora.

Learn more