Kiwifruit orchard boss can see the light

Keeping staff on side while radically changing kiwifruit vine management and increasing production is a feat only dreamed of by many orchard managers.

But for Allan Luckman it is a continuing experiment that appears to be improving year by year - over nine years he has improved his kiwifruit crop from 7529 trays a hectare to 11,121 trays.

Mr Luckman has managed the 15.96ha Paengaroa Dominion Park orchard, near Te Puke, for 16 years and has taken advice from kiwifruit consultant Peter Mulligan.

It is one of Zespri's monitor orchards - its fruit regularly tested for dry matter and ripeness - and has contributed to the early-start programme.

Next season estimates are it will produce 12,000 trays a hectare. Mr Luckman also manages other orchards and is in charge of a total of 41ha, including a developing block.

In his management system Mr Luckman aims for an even fruitset across the orchard.

"And every bay has got to pull its weight," he said. The main component in his orchard management is getting the pruning right.

He employs 10 people for most of the year and adds three students to the lineup in summer.

Most workers have been with him from the start, when he began moves to replace the vigorous-growing fruiting canes with lighter and shorter canes -- a device to open up the canopy and allow light to penetrate after conversion from T-bars to pergola.

The shorter canes had just as many buds as the more vigorous canes, he said.

He uses paint marks and asks staff to cover them with replacement canes. The aim was for good spacing so light ripened the canes and there was a high flower-to-fruit conversion.

The biggest problem with the system was that it took new staff members at least a day to resist the temptation to tie down too many canes.

"They have to spend the next day untying the extra canes," he said.

The key to crop increases and the good-sized fruit the orchard produces - sometimes against the industry trends - is canopy management.

"We use light to get our size. What we have shown is that wherever canes are too close the fruit is smaller."

Pruners now have specific areas in the orchards that are their responsibility.

It is a move that has pleased some staff members as it gives them more independence and they are able to manage their sections within the parameters set for the orchard as a whole.

They do the winter pruning, male pruning, summer pruning and thinning. As the orchard systems are becoming more developed, the work is becoming easier.

With assistance from his staff, he is putting in systems that will allow one person to manage and do all the work on 5ha of orchard.

Mr Luckman said winter pruning finished about mid-September and two weeks later pruners went back through their rows doing a final check of the canes and assessed the canopy density for later in the season.

Dominion Park Orchards has used "Extenday" - long sheets of white cloth which have the effect of reflecting light into the canopy - on every second row.

Mr Luckman said the plan was to move the cloth to alternate rows annually and to undersow with grass after it was moved.

He said the effect of Extenday on fruit size and yield was an extra 500 to 600 trays a hectare.

One of the tests orchardists applied to see if they had a canopy that let in enough light was checking out the grass growth in the orchard.

"If the grass is growing, there's usually enough light."

- NZPA