Pistachio Growers’ Association held our third PIT Group meeting of the year in Merbein on 27^th November 2024. We had 44 people in attendance for three excellent presentations centered on budding, and a presentation by Dr Maha Mahadevan covering her latest findings on juvenile shoot dieback. It was a bittersweet occasion as this was Dr Maha’s last PIT Group meeting before finishing up with PGA. We are sad to be saying goodbye but wish her all the best for her future in the horticultural industry and beyond!

PGA was very fortunate to have some of the industries’ knowledgeable budders join us for the day to share their learnings over the years. The presentations from the day are available above, and well worth a watch – you can find the videos at the end of this page, kindly provided by James Simpfendorfer of Permedah Fruits. Below is a rundown of the speakers:

• Michele Valier, Co-Owner at Riverina Nut Company: Michele gave us an overview of the nursery established by himself and three other nut professionals, currently cultivating over 150,000 trees in Leeton, NSW. One of the biggest topics of interest for the day was the high success rates that Michele and his team have had with budding using dormant budwood. This was a practice around in the early days of pistachio growing in Australia but has become less common overtime. Michele talked through the essentials for successful budding, which included: the right budwood (1 season old), correctly stored budwood, skilled grafters, strong tape/band pressure on the bud, max temps above 26 degrees for callusing, and trees must be headed at grafting.
• Andrew Bowring, Manager at Kyalite: Andrew shared his knowledge of budding after honing his craft over the last 28years+ at Kyalite’s orchards. Andrew’s presentation is full of great tips, covering the whole process, including land preparation before planting the rootstock, considerations when planting including contact with nurseries, optimum size for rootstock, early irrigation and fertiliser management, preparing trees for budding, optimum budding period, post budding management, management of emerging bud, re-budding, and post-budding fertiliser management. We were incredibly lucky to have Andrew share such detailed information on budding, and for a play-by-play please refer to his presentation above.
• Dr Ben Thomas, Ben Thomas Consulting: Ben followed on from Andrew’s presentation to detail good practice for young tree management, including soil requirements and preparation, highlighting key management issues, techniques such as cover cropping and windbreaks, macro- and micronutrients for young trees, and vigour and training for the second and third seasons after budding the rootstocks. Ben included some great photos on nutrient deficiency indicators and the key moments in the budding process which you can find in his presentation above.
• Dr Maha Mahadevan, Research Officer PGA: This was Maha’s last PIT group before finishing up with PGA. Maha shared her latest findings about juvenile shoot dieback, listing possible contributors including abiotic factors such as weather and temperature, as well as orchard management practices such as fertiliser, oil application and irrigation. There are photos of dieback and similar looking symptoms from growers’ properties in the slideshow as examples.

Following the presentations we had a discussion panel for any further questions from growers, with Pip Crawford of CMV Farms joining the three budding speakers on stage. The speakers gave tips on forming partnerships with your budding contractors, communicating early with nurseries, the process of budding with dormant budwood thanks to Michele, and we ended with some debate on modified central leader pruning.  

You can find the nurseries available for rootstock and budwood here. If you know of any others, please let us know so we can include them on the website.