Can Better Designed Orchards Increase Productivity? – Horticulture Week – Rob Saunders, Nigel Kitney, Nick Strelczuk
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Last year, agronomy firm H L Hutchinson began its Enhanced Light Interception Orchard System (HELIOS), a 10-year project looking at how orchard design can be improved to capture more sunlight and so increase yield, while also factoring in establishment costs and likely technological developments such as robotic picking and mechanical pruning, building on work in New Zealand by Dr Stuart Tustin of the government-owned Plant & Food Research institute and putting it in a UK context.
Last month (July 2019), Hutchinson invited growers to visit the programme’s two orchards in Herefordshire and east Kent.
On the hottest day of the year so far, 25 July 2019, top fruit growers and industry professionals gathered at A C Hulme and Sons’ Hoaden Court in Ash, near Canterbury, to listen to specialist agronomists Rob Saunders and Nigel Kitney discuss the progress of Hutchinsons’ Enhanced Light Interception Orchard System (HELIOS) project.