NIAB is hosting a Soft Fruit Day on 30 November which will update the industry on some exciting new developments from research projects taking place at East Malling and other research sites. In keeping with recent years, the event will be run as a webinar, to make it available to a UK-wide audience as well as overseas.
The event, which will be split into three sessions, starts with an update on Growing Kent & Medway’s Food Accelerator Programme, which helps and supports new businesses that are setting up in the food sector. Delegates will also hear about a new project that is developing digital crop management technology to identify plant health problems before visual symptoms appear. The first session will also provide the latest developments in coir recycling, and NIAB research results from resource-use efficiency work in strawberry and raspberry crops.
The second and third sessions focus on soft-fruit variety development and findings from disease and pest control research. This will include biocontrol approaches to strawberry diseases, predicting the risk of Mucor and Rhizopus in strawberry, new developments in SWD control, and IPM approaches to aphid, capsid, and thrips management. There will also be presentations on the development of wildflower mixes dedicated to soft-fruit crops and new research into landscape complexity and its impact on beneficial insects.
NIAB Knowledge Exchange Manager Scott Raffle, commented, “There is so much soft-fruit research going on at NIAB and other research organisations that the industry can find it difficult to keep up with the results. This annual event allows us to brief growers, agronomists, and technologists of the key results which could influence their crop management techniques and decisions in seasons to come.”
The event takes place on Wednesday 30 November starting at 9.20am and running through until 2.40pm. To register to attend or find out more, event details are found at: https://www.niab.com/niab-soft-fruit-day-30-november-23.
