This article appears in the Spring 2017 edition of Talking Avocados (Volume 28 No 3).

Nuffield Scholarship: avocado canopy management

The avocado industry’s Dudley Mitchell, an Avocados Australia director, is one of the 24 Nuffield Scholars named for 2018.
Dudley, from Bunbury, Western Australia, has received a scholarship supported by Woolworths, and will study current trends in canopy management of avocado orchards and how cultural practices will need to be addressed when considering high density planting.
“These will include but are not limited to establishment costs, pre-bearing tree management (from nursery to first year), use of PGRs, canopy architecture, pruning methods, machinery selection and use as well as a component of what the future holds in terms of ‘robot ready’ orchard design,” Mr Mitchell said.

“Conventional growing methods have led to a decline in water and land resources and have seen a plateau in profitability across the avocado sector.
“These factors are shifting grower interest away from conventional techniques to the use of high-density avocado planting to remedy these issues.”
However, Mr Mitchell believes the avocado industry’s current architectural growing model is not suited to high density plantings and will seek to identify new growing techniques, technologies and management systems that will be effective in the Australian sector as part of his study. Dudley’s company HCMS Pty Ltd manages Avonova Farms, a 50 hectare avocado orchard producing 800 tonnes of fruit per year on average, and a pack shed, which handles approximately 1,700 tonnes annually. Additionally, he is a co-investor in a planned 50 hectare expansion of the orchard that will be rolled out during the next three years.
“One of the four pillars of the recent Strategic Investment Plan for the avocado industry is to increase productivity by 10 percent without commensurate increases in production costs per kilogram,” Mr Mitchell said.
“Higher density planting may deliver greater productivity initially, and at a similar cost of production, however, without effective canopy management productivity will decline earlier in the life of the orchard when compared to conventional planting methods.
“I will be looking at the avocado industries in Chile, North America, Israel, New Zealand and South Africa during our off season, as well as studying other fruit cropping systems in these areas that have been successful in high density production in an effort to identify principles that can be adopted or adapted,” he said.
“Chile in particular is a world leader in high-density avocado orchards.” Mr Mitchell said the goal was to produce avocados two or three years after planting, rather than four or five.
Speaking to The Land newspaper, Nuffield CEO Jodie Dean said the scholarships had helped build the capacity of young agricultural leaders for more than 67 years.