By Marguerite White, Project Coordinator for AUSVEG, ICD Project Services

Len Tesoriero (Plant Pathologist, Crop Doc), Bud Shaheen (Agronomist, Ace Ohlsson) and grower Jason Vella (Kurmond) discuss disease challenges at one of the project’s Sydney Market walk-a-rounds.

The recently-concluded Building Biosecurity Capacity and Resilience within the NSW Vegetable Industry project has left growers and agronomists with a collection of useful tools and skills.

Increased climatic variability and severe weather events have become part and parcel of the NSW vegetable growing environment, continuously changing the on-farm pest and disease risk profile for growers and the frequency and severity of their impact upon production and profitability.

The AUSVEG-led Building Biosecurity Capacity and Resilience within the NSW Vegetable Industry project has taken a proactive, multi-pronged approach to supporting growers to prepare and manage these risks when faced with flood and saturated conditions. The most effective tactic has been the project’s emphasis on working cooperatively with frontline farm advisors to build pest and disease identification, management strategies and monitoring skills, and provide ongoing support as they work with their network of growers.

“Many growers have trust in their long-term advisors,” says Anthony Muscat, Senior Agronomist with Ace Ohlsson in the Sydney Basin.

Andy Ryland (IPM Consulting, left) works with AgriWest agronomists from the Sydney Basin, Southern Highlands and Central Tablelands of NSW to build pest and beneficial identification skills at an IPDM workshop conducted in the Sydney Basin.

“In the past, advice was often chemical based, but today guidance on proactive, integrated physical, biological, together with targeted chemical strategies is more commonplace. Today we also need to know about beneficial insects and parasitoids.”

Anthony believes it’s getting harder to stay informed about available tactics. With increased climatic variability comes the need to have a broader number of tools in the toolbox. Having the opportunity to visit his clients along-side the experts engaged through the project helped him ‘join the dots’.

“The challenge for many advisors is keeping updated on the potential threats and latest controls as the seasonal conditions unfold,” he says.

“The project information has helped connect growing conditions, such as wet soils with high temperatures and humidity, to crop threats on the horizon, and therefore what we may need to consider and brush-up on.”

The NSW project has delivered activities aimed at supporting frontline advisors to better support their network of local vegetable growers, including reseller and company agronomists, agency service providers, private farm consultants, seed and equipment/ machinery representatives, and development officers.

Andy Ryland (left) and Len Tesoriero (Plant Pathologist, Crop Doc, right) take a practical approach to developing the crop monitoring and diagnosis skills of local agronomists at an IPDM workshop conducted in the Sydney Basin

Local Land Services (LLS) Agronomist Ewan Leighton, based in Coffs Harbour, says that the grower farm visits, workshops and drop-in mornings at the rural stores of the project benefited local advisors as much as the growers.

“Catching up with the growers in this region can be difficult, but the plant pathology and integrated pest management expertise the project brought to the region attracted the growers, and people like me, to get involved,” says Ewan.

“Walking through tunnels and scouting with the growers alongside people like Dr Len Tesoriero of Crop Doc and Jake Byrnes of Biological Services both reinforced existing knowledge and transferred new knowledge across to my team and local company and industry representatives. That is enduring and benefits the whole region.”

The project has designed and delivered skill development and support opportunities that aligned with key stages of grower and advisor crop protection/ management assessment and decision making.

“All activities delivered originated from the agronomists themselves,” says AUSVEG Program Manager-Biosecurity Dr Rosalie Daniel.

“The Community of Practice (CoP) was something seen to work in other industries and on other topics.

Andy Ryland, Len Tesoriero and Bud Shaheen (Agronomist, Ace Ohlsson) visit brothers Jason and Daniel Vella on their 60ha mixed vegetable property. Samples were taken from a troublesome zucchini crop and sent away for diagnostics

We asked vegetable service providers from across NSW to join quarterly online catchups to exchange updates on pest, disease and weed challenges current to the seasonal growing conditions and invited speakers to present on new information. This forum underpins the activities delivered across the regions, like a regular peer check in.”

When asked about the benefits of the CoP, participants have reflected that the information gained is useful to share with their growers, and the regional exchange has, at times, provided forewarning of issues that may be headed to their regions.

Recently, an integrated pest and disease management (IPDM) workshop was held at Western Sydney University for vegetable service providers of the Sydney Basin. The 18 agribusiness agronomists and resellers who attended spent a day in the field and in-room with microscopes working on their scouting, identification and management know-how.

“It really helped to know where to look on the plants and what exactly to look for, whether pests or diseases,” says a local AgriWest agronomist who attended the event.

“Working with the microscopes developed my skills in distinguishing between symptoms of viruses and bacterial diseases and identifying some of the more common disease complexes,” another attendee from Ace Ohlsson.

To support infield, the NSW project has also conducted a free diagnostics service. Service providers have received kits to send samples of pests and disease for comprehensive laboratory testing and analysis.

“Getting the right diagnosis can be critical when it comes to protecting the region from emerging issues, especially when conditions change suddenly after a weather event,” says Rose.

“Well-trained advisors will get it right when it comes to common issues, but events such as flooding can bring in new problems. Diagnostics can help to confirm the cause of the problem in the crop and help to ensure a targeted control program can be specified.”

A major task faced by frontline farm advisors is assisting growers to make informed decisions after a crop has been impacted by flood, prolonged saturated soils, and/or pest and disease pressures.

“The hard decisions do need an economic lens to better inform everyone,” says Bud Shaheen of Ace Ohlsson, based at the Sydney Markets.

“At times the labour costs of harvest, process and transport may not stack-up against the price paid for the [flood or water] damaged product.

“The idea of a crop gross margin budget tool was an idea I took to the project. I felt it was important for an agronomist to have a systematic way to crunch the numbers with their growers and to compare the economic outcome of different crop options for both current and next crops.”

Bud’s idea came to fruition through his partnership with project coordinator, Marguerite White, and Principal Economist at AgEcon, George Revell. The project has developed and trialled the NSW vegetable crops gross margin budget tool to enable those who support growers to work with them to make more economically informed crop decisions.

“I like the way we have divided the calculations into each stage of the crop, from bed preparation to market sale and including labour, the costliest input for our industry,” Bud says.

The information-only tool is simple to use but does require growers to know certain common costs and times to complete standard operations.

“It’s quite intuitive to use,” adds Bud. “But there is no doubt growers who are not big on doing financials will benefit from having their farm advisors support them.

“At the end of the day, spending an hour on doing some figures may benefit your profitability, especially in times when knee jerk reactions may compromise longer-term recovery.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Contact Rosalie Daniel – Biosecurity AUSVEG at Rosalie.daniel@ausveg.com.au or 03 9882 0277.