LYCHEES have been grown in Australia for more than 50 years notwithstanding that they are hard to grow with consistent yields.
But the industry has started to expand recently along the districts of far north Qld, including the Atherton Tableland with the new growers waiting out the six-year lead to bearing and lifting the industry to perhaps 400 growers.
The formation of ULMA – the industry’s United Lychee Marketing Association based in Brisbane that assists growers by building markets and organising shipments of the fresh fruit exports to seasonal markets including Hong Kong, Singapore, the Pacific and the Middle East has been a positive factor.
Martin Joyce is a Qld grower with a property of about 13 hectares and 2500 lychee trees located about 35km south of Ingham.
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Mr Joyce says he is a full-time grower but he is getting on in years and is always trying to introduce new, easier, or certainly less labour-intensive solutions into his farming practices.
His 2500 trees are about 30 or more years of age and were planted on a 9m row by 7m tree pattern (although many more recent plantings are now on an 8m x 4m spacing).
Like many other tree crops lychees can assume a large tree shape and canopy as they mature and this makes spraying into a canopy that has quite large leaf sizes a challenge.
But Mr Joyce uses contractors to mechanically prune his lychee trees each year aiming for a smaller shape at about 4m in height which also aids hand harvesting.
An appropriate spray regime is also important as lychees are subjected to a number of pests including moths, mites and borers that reduce yields and in some cases fruit quality.
Since 1996, Mr Joyce has employed a Silvan Suntuff 1000L sprayer as his principal unit but he recently decided to upgrade to a new sprayer resulting in the purchase of a new Silvan 2000L Supaflo trailed sprayer through his local Silvan dealer NQAS based in Ingham.
The sprayer was also delivered, calibrated and commissioned by Hamish Howarth from NQAS with support from Frank Torrisi, Silvan’s Townsville based representative for north Qld.
Mr Joyce said he is completely happy with the larger tank capacity and more up-to-date Silvan Supaflo.
The Supaflo is a range of Silvan sprayers that provides highly effective spray coverage for a wide range of crops including grapes, apples, citrus, bananas, peaches and also the growing list of sub-tropical tree crops.
Proven Supaflo features including the 900mm axial flow fan with air straitening vanes, the choice of high pressure diaphragm pumps ensures that the Silvan Supaflo sprayer range delivers consistent and reliable spray results.
- Copy supplied by Silvan.