#ausmacadamias

Industry Resources

FILTER YOUR SELECTION
About 131 resources matched your search criteria.
Monitoring and Managing Post-harvest Quality in Macadamia

2024 | Jones K | Fact Sheet

AMS’ recent MacGroups featured post-harvest management expert Kim Jones, Director of Cropwatch Independent Laboratories. The session provided participants with practical ways growers can retain nut quality on-farm. This resource summarises useful monitoring and management tips.

Post-harvest NIS assessment guide

2023 | Australian Macadamia Society | Manual/guide

This guide is designed to help you identify nut in shell defects and their causes. It also lists control measures most commonly used to help manage problems in the orchard that cause defects.

How on-farm handling can impact macadamia quality (Feb 2023 MacGroup)

2023 | Wallace H | Video

Do you have capacity to hold and dry nuts on farm if there are delays or difficulties within the delivery system this season? At the February 2023 AMS MacGroup, post-harvest specialist Prof. Helen Wallace (Griffith University) outlined what we know about brown centres, on-farm post-harvest handling, and importantly how post-harvest handling impacts quality defects.

Tree shakers

2021 | Australian Macadamia Society | Fact Sheet

While tree shaking technology was introduced into tree crop industries like almonds in the 1960s, it has only been used in macadamias in the last few years. Part of the reason for this is that growers believed that the machines could easily damage tree trunks or roots and possibly increase trees susceptibility to disease or even kill them through ring barking.
Tree shaking technology has come a long way since it was first developed. Today’s shakers are sophisticated, more “gentle” machines fitted with sensors as well as padded and compensating heads contributing to them being much less likely to damage trees than in the past.
With several growers having recently bought new or used shaker machines, and contractors in New South Wales and Queensland providing tree shaking services, growers are now looking to the benefits of incorporating the practice into their harvesting and orchard management schedule.

Grower experiences with tree shaking

2021 | Australian Macadamia Society | Video

A growing number of macadamia orchard owners and managers are incorporating tree shakers into their harvest programs. As well as helping to speed up harvest, shakers are being used to improve orchard hygiene, decrease the harbour for pests and diseases, reduce harvest costs and allow after harvest operations to start sooner than normal.
In this video, 4 macadamia growers talk about their experiences with tree shaking, including when and why they started, types of tree shakers, the benefits and challenges, results, varieties, use of ethrel, tree shaking and irrigation, and tips for other growers.

Assessing crop loss (Updated April 2023)

2021 | Australian Macadamia Society | Fact Sheet

Understanding and quantifying in-field losses, evidence of which never makes it to the processor, is critical.

Maintaining quality after harvest

2020 | Jones K | Article

Post-harvest management is just as important as insect and disease control. Growers can suffer significant losses through poor post-harvest handling practices that allow mould, brown centres, germination or discolouration to increase during storage on-farm. An understanding of the biological and physical processes that affect nut quality is essential. This article summarises past research on maintaining quality after harvest.

Tree shaker improving the harvest season

2020 | Australian Macadamia Society | Research report/Update

Macadamia grower Chris Cook, from Arapala orchard on the NSW mid north coast, talks about his purchase of a Shockwave Monoboom tree shaker. Chris shares some valuable tips and advice for other growers thinking of purchasing a shaker for their orchard.

Macadamia physiology and nut quality (Video, Feb/March 2020 MacGroup)

2020 | Penter M | Video

South African expert Mark Penter has completed extensive research on South African orchards during challenging climatic seasons and led numerous research trials to improve on-farm practices which directly impact kernel quality and post-harvest efficiency.

Ethepon use in challenging environmental conditions (Video, Feb/March 2020 MacGroup)

2020 | Penter M | Video

South African expert Mark Penter discusses the current climate changes facing the macadamia industry and the implications for agriculture for more broadly.

Subscribe to AMS ENEWS today and get the latest industry news

Proudly Supported By

Supported by Hort Innovation and Macadamia Fund

This website has been partly funded by Hort Innovation, using the macadamia research and development levy and contributions from the Australian Government.