Jack Hughes, our new research and development manager, has provided a brief summary of the R&D projects we will be working on with Plant & Food Research during the year.
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Project
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Leader and researchers
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Objectives
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Final report due in 2020
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Benchmarking of SummerGreen programme
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Peter Lo
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- Analysis of agchem use patterns.
- ID of seasonal issues.
- Agchem use and resistance management guidelines.
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31 July
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Cherry pollination
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Max Buxton
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- Develop a pollen dose response curve for (self-compatible) Staccato.
- Estimate number of bee visits required for successful pollination.
- Put result into context with current literature.
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30 June
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Suppression of fungal and bacterial diseases
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Phil Elmer, Virginia Marroni, Peter Wood
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- CO: Evaluate two post-harvest cherry biofungicides.
- CO: Assess and identify ‘dry’ and canker-like lesions in new cherry orchards.
- HB: Determine sensitivity of wild brown rot strains to a new fungicide and monitor effectiveness of a new resistance management programme in late season peaches.
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30 Sept
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Apricot evaluation
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Jill Stanley, Claire Scofield
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- Harvest and post-harvest evaluation of elite selections (two harvest dates x three storage intervals for five selections).
- Propagation of trees (two selections x two tree forms – FOPs & ML).
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30 June
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Research scholarship
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Jill Stanley, Michael Hutton
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- Light relations (interception and distribution) of planar cordon growing systems.
- Suitability of new apricot selections for the Asian market.
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31 March
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Jack is looking forward to sharing the results of this work as it comes through.
