DPI and Goulburn-Murray Water have initiated several meetings for orchardists to review best management practices during this dry start to the irrigation season.

Seminars have been held at Orrvale, Grahamvale, Tatura and the next meeting will be at Kyabram DPI on Tuesday, September 12, starting at 5.30 pm.

DPI Cobram FruitCheque officer Henry Schneider is discussing management options for orchardists at these meetings and G-MW representatives are providing information on the water allocations.

Mr Schneider said an important overall strategy for setting a crop this season was to make sure the fruit trees were not stressed during flowering, fruit set and during the early phase of fruitlet growth.

A good seed number per fruit in apples and pears, plus optimum conditions for early fruit growth, require adequate soil moisture from green tip to about four weeks after full bloom. This is similar in stone fruit.

If need be, thinning can commence after this, if the season does not progress favourably.

Thinning will be about four weeks after full bloom. The decision to thin has to be made early and carried out promptly to make sure there is commercial grade fruit available for harvest.

Strategies for dealing with low water allocations on the orchard include:

To consider buying at least some water now and deciding if more is needed as the season and conditions become clearer over the next two months.

To spray off all weeds to reduce moisture losses and to reduce competition for moisture.

To ensure a robust apple blossom thinning program is in place.

If deciding not to grow crop this season, spray off all flowers to eliminate fruit for this season only.

This will dramatically reduce water needs, reduce spraying costs, especially for insect pests such as codling moth and give the trees a chance to produce reasonably good fruiting wood for the following season.

Measure soil moisture to prevent over and under watering.

Water young trees individually, not the whole planted area, using micro-jets or drippers.

Good growth must be maintained for apples on dwarfing apple rootstocks.

If they are stressed, the trees will not grow properly to fill their allocated space. Recovery from such a major setback is very slow, if at all.

Goulburn-Murray Water has provided updated details on irrigation availability that has been widely publicised.

Fruit Growers Victoria has provided figures to G-MW on water needs for late apple crops given the currently proposed cutoff date of April 1.

G-MW will maintain close consultation with irrigators in considering late allocations for late apple varieties and for tomato growers and annual pasture production needs.

SPC Ardmona will be releasing information on likely intake for fruit varieties on September 15 in order to allow orchardists to consider their production strategies.

Total water storage capacity as of September 1 was 957 Gl.

There is an eight-in-10 chance the season will be very similar to the 2002-03 drought conditions.

- Ross Wall

chief executive officer

Fruit Growers Victoria