November 2025 Future Orchards® Spring Series – Western Australia

Followed by Orchard Walk at Bamess Farms Churches Road Jardee

Join us at APAL’s Future Orchards® Spring Series of orchard walks from 17–21 November 2025, which will focus on crop load metrics throughout the season and how to assign numbers to the crop at key times from pre-pruning to postharvest to inform decision-making. AgFirst Horticultural Consultant Jack Wilson will lead the discussion on this topic.

Joining us on the Southern Loop will be subject matter expert Sarah Gruntmeir from the United States. Sarah will present on thinning of apple fruit, whether mechanical fruitlet thinning (BMV Newton) can be part of a thinning strategy and how to predict fruit drop for a secondary thinner application.

Sarah grew up on a farm in Oklahoma and studied Agricultural Sciences at Cornell University in New York State. She went on to manage a diversified orchard in the Hudson Valley and later conducted research in Washington State on robotic apple pollination and fruit quality within flower clusters. She is now based in Ravensburg, Germany, pursuing her PhD at Kompetenzzentrum Obstbau-Bodensee, where her research focuses on analysing non-destructive spectroscopy for predicting fruit abscission.

For further information, please contact communications@apal.org.au