Industry Extension

Avocados Australia delivers a range of extension activities to support best practice adoption across avocado supply chains.

Qualicado

The Qualicado program delivered best practice information to industry through a series of workshops with growers, packers, wholesalers and ripeners. Over three years, more than 1,800 stakeholders participated in these workshops, which aimed to provide relevant information on best practice. All presentations from these workshops can be accessed via the Best Practice Resource.

During the Qualicado grower workshops 315 individual grower self-assessments were completed. These enabled growers to assess their practices against industry best practice and develop action plans addressing areas for improvement.

As part of the Qualicado program, industry experts undertook one-on-one ‘facility health checks’ to assess facilities and quality management procedures of packers, ripeners and wholesalers. Thirty-three pack houses and 13 wholesalers/ripeners have participated in facility health checks across the country, receiving recommendations for further improvement.

Retailer Training

Avocados Australia also delivered an extensive retail training program in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth from 2010 to 2015. This program provided face-to-face training on avocado best practice handling to all avocado retail sectors, from major supermarket chains to independent greengrocers.

Through this program, more than 1,700 stores received best practice training at least once. An avocado retail training guide and training video were developed and are available via the Best Practice Resource. 

Program evaluation demonstrated significant improvement in store practices over time. Details are included in the final report AV12013, available on the Best Practice Resource.

Avocados Australia is committed to delivering and/or supporting ongoing supply chain education programs to further improve productivity and the quality of avocados available to consumers.