As part of the Developing orchardists of the future pilot project under Hort Innovation's Frontiers investment program, the theme for this spring series is "Improve or remove: Diagnosing your financial performance."

Representatives from APAL’s technical partner AgFirst will build on their winter discussion on identifying the performance type of your blocks and guide discussions on how growers can set up for a cost-efficient harvest with learnings from this data utilising the Orchard Business Analysis (OBA) data.

 In orchard discussion and BBQ lunch to follow at Newtons Brothers Orchard on Starkie Road Manjimup.

Sarah de Bruin from AgFirst will be joined by Poliana Francescatto Ph.D., Global Technical Development Manager - PGRs at Valent Biosciences who will discuss flower initiation and differentiation and provide context on ways to manipulate this for your benefit in the orchard.

Poliana has worked for Valent BioSciences, a subsidiary of Tokyo-based Sumitomo Chemical, since January 2019 as a Global Technical Development Manager, with responsibilities for market and technical development of plant growth regulators (PGRs) in fruit crops around the world, working closely with growers to attend to their unmet needs. She is an applied fruit physiologist based in Oregon, US, with vast experience in using PGRs, floral biology and crop load management of pome and stone fruit. Poli is a daughter of a first-generation tree fruit-growing family in Santa Catarina, Brazil, and that is how her passion for horticulture began. She received her PhD in Plant Sciences in 2014 from a joint research program at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (Brazil) and Ohio State University (US). Since then, Poli has worked in various postdoctoral research and extension positions at EMBRAPA and Cornell University, focusing on orchard management practices and plant growth regulator use in tree fruit crops.

Representatives from APAL’s technical partner AgFirst will build on their winter discussion on identifying the performance type of your blocks and guide discussions on how growers can set up for a cost-efficient harvest with learnings from this data utilising the Orchard Business Analysis (OBA) data. They will be joined by Poliana Francescatto, Global Technical Development Manager – PGRs at Valent Biosciences (US)