Vegetables & Fruit July/August 2026

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COVER From orchard to export market, South Africa's deciduous fruit industry showcases excellence through innovation, sustainable production and a commitment to delivering world-class fruit.

EDITORIAL Willie Louw (Group editor)

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Agri-Expo recognised for industry innovation CGA increases lemon export forecast New breeding techniques support more resilient agriculture Citrus exports from flooded areas expected to decline by at least 5% Beyond the packhouse Young women farmers helping strengthen South Africa's food supply Tru-Cape celebrates 25 years of growth, partnership and global leadership

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Peppers move under cover as growers chase consistency Navigating the road to successful pepper production Brown rugose virus puts pepper biosecurity to the test The economics of colour in the pepper crop

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PEPPERS

Winter chill and dormancy: growing northern trees in a southern climate Choosing the right rootstock for apples and pears Designing the orchard: architecture, light and the South African balance CROP PROTECTION

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Geïntegreerde benadering saam met BASF beskerm jou oes Integrated pest management and the rise of biological control Invasive and quarantine pests: the biosecurity front line Residues and market access, living with the MRL

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NWU research explores new approach to snakebite treatment Making every drop count during water shortages

VEGETABLES & FRUIT | JULIE • AUGUSTUS 2026

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Agri-Expo recognised for industry innovation Agri-Expo has received an Industry Innovation Award at the recent Western Cape Economy Innovation Awards, organised by the Cape Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCCI). The organisation was one of 13 recipients recognised across six categories, alongside innovations from sectors including retail, tourism and agriculture.

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he recognition comes as Agri-Expo marks its 195th anniversary. Established in 1831, the agricultural society has continued to expand its role in supporting producers through industry events, competitions and collaborative initiatives.

According to general manager Breyton Milford, the award reflects the organisation's focus on developing partnerships that strengthen the agricultural value chain.

“This acknowledges the impact of our unique multi-platform model that brings together producers, industry, government and markets to create opportunities for growth across the agricultural value chain,” Milford said.

Recipients were evaluated on measurable economic impact, practical innovation and the number of businesses and employees benefiting from each initiative. The awards also recognised innovations that strengthen supply chains and collaboration across industries.

Over the years, Agri-Expo has introduced initiatives including the Hollard Game Changer Award and the South African Preserve Championships, while continuing to develop established programmes such as the South African Dairy Championships and its support for agricultural shows.

Breyton Milford, Agri-Expo general manager, and Chris Fourie, AgriExpo president, with Western Cape premier Alan Winde at the Western Cape Economy Innovation Awards.

Milford said the recognition demonstrates the importance of collaboration in building a resilient agricultural sector.

“For us, this award is ultimately about people, the producers, entrepreneurs, innovators, volunteers and communities who help drive agriculture forward every day,” Milford said.

CGA increases lemon export forecast T

he Citrus Growers' Association of Southern Africa (CGA) has increased its export estimate for the 2026 lemon season from 45,8 million to 49,4 million 15 kg cartons following a recent meeting of its Lemon Variety Focus Group.

The revised forecast reflects favourable growing conditions across key lemon-producing regions. Although the season started later than usual, three significant cold fronts accelerated fruit colour development, improving fruit readiness for export.

Increased rainfall in many production areas also supported larger fruit sizes, contributing to higher carton volumes.

According to the CGA, effective coordination and commu­ nication across the citrus value chain will be important in managing the increased volumes and maintaining a steady supply of fruit to export markets.

Packing activity remains concentrated in several major production regions, with Senwes, Patensie and the Boland accounting for most of the remaining harvest. The largest upward revisions to production estimates have been recorded in Letsitele, Limpopo, and the Sundays River

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Valley in the Eastern Cape.

Despite the increase in export volumes, the seasonal pattern is expected to differ from previous years. Rather than tapering off gradually, exports are expected to decline more sharply from around mid-July as the season draws to a close.

The CGA also reported that fruit quality remains excellent, supporting South Africa's reputation as a reliable supplier of high-quality lemons to international markets.

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New breeding techniques support more resilient agriculture Rising input costs, climate variability and increasing pest pressure continue to challenge agricultural production, placing greater emphasis on technologies that improve productivity while supporting sustainable food production.

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ccording to Corteva, new breeding techniques (NBTs) are becoming an increasingly important tool for developing crops that are better adapted to changing production conditions. These techniques enable breeders to improve desirable plant traits with greater precision while working within the plant’s natural genetic framework.

Drian Bresler, seed product development lead for Africa and the Middle East at Corteva, said advances in DNA sequencing, predictive analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) have significantly improved plant breeding. However, field evaluation remains an essential part of the process.

“Working closely with farmers and leveraging our extensive network of technologies, we are able to improve crops and yields in ways that were not possible before. In the future, having even more precise tools, particularly in new breeding techniques, gene editing and understanding plant stress responses at a molecular level, will be vital.”

Bresler explained that multi-year, multi-location field trials remain critical, providing practical performance data that complements molecular information obtained through DNA sequencing. Combining these datasets enables researchers to predict how different genetics are likely to perform under specific environmental conditions before varieties are evaluated under commercial production.

Predictive analytics also helps breeders narrow billions of possible genetic combinations to a manageable number for field testing. Field performance is then used to validate these predictions and identify varieties capable of delive­ ring stable yields under a range of growing conditions.

Alongside scientific advances, regulatory oversight remains an important component of introducing new breeding technologies.

Dr Kulani Machaba, regulatory lead for Africa and the Middle East at Corteva, said products developed using new breeding techniques are assessed individually to ensure they are safe and substantially equivalent to conventionally bred crops.

“In South Africa, Corteva works across multiple government departments to ensure that all products comply fully with legal requirements. At the same time, the company engages proactively with authorities through industry working groups, ensuring that regulations evolve in step with rapidly advancing technologies,” Machaba said.

Machaba added that collaboration across the agricultural value chain is important for monitoring new technologies, assessing their potential impacts and supporting evidence-based regulatory development.

Looking ahead, Bresler believes advances in gene edi­ ting and plant breeding will play an increasingly important role in helping agriculture respond to changing production challenges.

“By selecting traits with unprecedented precision, we can enhance productivity and resilience directly in the environment where the crops grow,” Bresler said. ­

Drian Bresler, seed product development lead for Africa and the Middle East.

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Citrus exports from flooded areas expected to decline by at least 5% T

Initial assessments by the Citrus Growers’ Association of Southern Africa (CGA) indicate that recent severe weather will result in a decrease of at least 5% in citrus exports from flood-damaged areas. The affected regions include Patensie in the Eastern Cape and Citrusdal and the Boland in the Western Cape.

he association said it is still too early to determine the full extent of the damage, as some growers have not yet been able to access their orchards. As a result, the preliminary estimates may increase as more assessments are completed.

In addition, fruit drop caused by the flooding may continue over time, making it difficult to accurately quantify losses at this stage.

The mandarin crop has been the hardest hit, as the country's main mandarin-producing regions were affected and harvesting was interrupted during a critical early stage of the season.

Despite the challenges, most affected farms have worked hard to recover from flood-related delays. Although export volumes have been revised downward, the integrity and reliability of supply to international markets remain intact. Orchards located close to rivers suffered the greatest damage, while most orchards received rainfall without significant losses and continue to produce high-quality fruit.

Dr Boitshoko Ntshabele, CEO of the CGA, said farming communities across the affected regions continue to deal with both immediate losses and the longer-term consequences of damaged infrastructure.

"The timing of the rain was particularly challenging, as the citrus season was just beginning to gain momentum. While it remains too early to exactly quantify the cost of the floods, it is clear that orchards, farm structures and road infrastructure have been affected, mostly around Patensie in the Eastern Cape," Ntshabele said.

The association noted that, in terms of timing and progres-

sion, the current citrus season is not running later than last year and is generally two to three weeks ahead.

The CGA also welcomed the declaration of a national state of disaster and supports calls by fellow agricultural organisations, including the South African Table Grape Industry (SATI), for increased disaster relief and recovery support from both provincial and national government for producers and rural communities.

The most severe flood damage occurred in the Kouga Municipality in the Eastern Cape, particularly in the Gamtoos Valley around Patensie. Floodwaters damaged citrus orchards, washed away topsoil, uprooted trees and destroyed roads.

In the Western Cape, Citrusdal and the Boland also experienced heavy rainfall. Although water levels in Citrusdal exceeded those recorded during the previous flood events, the overall damage appears to be less severe, with key access routes remaining operational. The CGA attributed this to infrastructure improvements and river works carried out by the provincial government, which helped protect both communities and the citrus export season in the Olifants River Valley.

The flooding has added further pressure to an industry al­ ready facing global disruptions linked to the conflict in the Middle East. Rising input costs, particularly for diesel and fertili­ ser, together with significantly higher shipping costs, continue to place growers under financial strain.

"What had been shaping up as a strong season is now requiring a high degree of adaptability from producers and exporters alike," Ntshabele said. ­

Beyond the packhouse Dirk Schlebusch PROGRAMMED PROCESS OUTSOURCING (PPO)

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outh African agriculture has always operated in an uncertain environment, but the combination of shifting trade policies, climate variability and rising operating costs is changing the way producers manage risk. Increasingly, some of the greatest threats to profitability originate well beyond the farm gate and packhouse.

Tariff changes and fuel prices add another layer of uncertainty. These external pressures also expose weaknesses in traditional labour models.

In an opinion piece by Dirk Schlebusch, he states that this

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has prompted some businesses to reconsider how labour is managed within their operations.

One option is the use of outcome-based business process outsourcing (BPO), where service providers are contracted according to measurable outputs rather than hours worked.

Instead of paying for labour time, producers pay for completed activities, such as produce packed or units processed.

Schlebusch argues that this approach can provide greater flexibility when production volumes fluctuate, allowing labour costs to move more closely in line with throughput. Under these arrangements, service providers are also responsible for workforce management, payroll administration and labour deployment, reducing some of the administrative burden on

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Young women farmers helping strengthen South Africa's food supply Young women across South Africa are increasingly building successful agricultural businesses, creating employment opportunities and contributing to food production in their communities.

TIGER BRANDS

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n Limpopo, Petunia Molea and Vhengani Ndou are among a new generation of farmers demonstrating how agriculture can provide opportunities for entrepreneurship while supporting local economic development.

Molea, from Gumbu Village near Musina, began farming with a small maize garden at home after being inspired by her mother's passion for agriculture. She established Godzwana General Farming in 2017 on one hectare of land and gradually expanded the business by reinvesting income from each harvest.

Today, the farm covers five hectares, supplies tomatoes to Tiger Brands for the production of All Gold Tomato Sauce and employs two permanent employees together with 15 seasonal workers.

Several kilometres away, Ndou, from Muswodi Village, chose farming over a career as a qualified boilermaker. She established Onay Farming in 2019 and has since built a business employing five permanent employees and around 30 seasonal workers.

In addition to supplying tomatoes to Tiger Brands, her farm provides practical workplace experience for agriculture students from the University of Venda.

Both women participate in the Tiger Brands Hulisani Agri­ cultural Development Programme, which supports emerging farmers through initiatives aimed at improving productivity, sustainability and long-term business growth.

Maanda Milubi, Tiger Brands director of enterprise supplier development and transformation, said supporting emerging farmers contributes to stronger agricultural value chains and local economic development.

“Young farmers have an important role to play in strengthe­ ning South Africa’s food security, creating jobs and contributing to economic growth,” Milubi said.

For Ndou, agriculture offers young people an opportunity to build businesses while creating employment in their com­ munities.

Petunia Molea, owner of Godzwana General Farming near Musina, has expanded her business from one hectare to five hectares. Today, the farm employs two permanent employees and 15 seasonal workers.

Vhengani Ndou, owner of Onay Farming near Musina, employs five permanent employees and around 30 seasonal workers. The farm also provides practical workplace experience for agriculture students from the University of Venda.

“Agriculture offers young people the opportunity to build a future for themselves while creating opportunities for others. Success doesn't happen overnight, but with patience, perseverance and a willingness to work hard, it is possible to build a sustainable business and make a lasting impact in your community,” Ndou said.

Molea believes farming can provide meaningful opportunities for young people prepared to invest the time and effort needed to succeed.

“Farming is not easy, but with patience, commitment and hard work, it is possible to build something meaningful and create opportunities for yourself and others,” Molea said.

Beyond the packhouse FROM PAGE 6 producers.

Schlebusch believes performance-based operating models can improve financial planning by giving businesses a clearer understanding of operating costs under different production scenarios.

He also argues that greater operational flexibility may benefit

farming communities, particularly where agricultural businesses play an important role in supporting local employment and economic activity.

As volatility continues to shape agriculture, reviewing labour structures and operational costs is likely to remain part of broader discussions around long-term sustainability.

VEGETABLES & FRUIT | JULIE • AUGUSTUS 2026

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Tru-Cape celebrates 25 years of growth and global leadership Tru-Cape Fruit marketing is celebrating 25 years of growth, innovation and partnership, marking a milestone that reflects the company's contribution to South Africa's apple and pear industry significant milestone for producers and exporters alike.

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stablished in 2001 following the consolidation of leading producer organisations, Tru-Cape was formed in response to industry deregulation and fragmentation. Since then, it has grown into South Africa’s largest apple and pear exporter, representing around 20% of the country’s total production.

The company attributes its success to grower ownership of the value chain, disciplined market access and a long-term approach to value creation.

Chairman Pieter Graaff said Tru-Cape was created to achieve the scale needed to compete internationally, a goal the company has successfully realised.

“In global fruit markets, scale is essential. Tru-Cape brought that together. We grew from about 10 million cartons in our first year to more than 18 million today, and we are moving toward 20 million by 2028,” Graaff said.

Owned by Two-a-Day and Ceres Fruit Growers, Tru-Cape exports to approximately 108 countries. The company employs around 90 people directly while supporting thousands of jobs across its producer base and value chain.

Graaff said the company’s strength lies in its grower-focused business model and disciplined approach to the market.

Former managing director and founding architect Charles Hughes said a strong understanding of international markets has been central to the company's success.

“From the start, we understood we needed to know every market intimately. That meant travelling, listening, and buil­ding the right relationships.”

A key strategy was appointing a single recipient in each market, creating accountability and strengthening long-term commercial partnerships.

Hughes said the company’s focus has always remained on delivering value for its growers.

“We were always focused on one shareholder group, the growers. That clarity shaped every decision.”

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Managing director Roelf Pienaar said Tru-Cape has evolved from a marketing organisation into a fully integrated valuechain partner.

“Today, we actively align orchard production with global consumer demand. It's no longer just about selling fruit, it's about managing varieties, optimising returns, and building resilient markets.”

Over the past two decades, the company has expanded its presence in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, while strengthe­ ning retail relationships across Europe and the United Kingdom.

“Brand strength now ensures year-round presence in key markets, which creates stability even in volatile conditions,” Pienaar said.

Board member Derek Corder said the company has strengthened growers’ access to international markets while improving long-term planning. Greater scale has also improved growers’ ability to make long-term production decisions.

The company has also played a role in advancing innovation across the industry through improvements in cultivars, rootstocks, packhouse automation, cold chain systems and data-driven decision-making using artificial intelligence and machine learning. These developments have improved efficiency, reduced losses and strengthened alignment between production and global market demand.

Over the past 25 years, Tru-Cape believes one of its greatest achievements has been providing stability during a period of significant change in the industry, while continuing to invest in infrastructure, people and market development.

Looking to the future, Pienaar said continued expansion and adaptability will remain key drivers of the business.

“What excites me most is the prospect of exponential growth, as our packing capacity at both Ceres Fruit Growers and Two-a-Day is expanding. It puts us in an incredible position for the next quarter of a century.”

SOETRISSIES

Peppers move under cover as growers chase consistency South Africa’s pepper crop is steadily leaving the open field. Across the main production areas, more growers are moving sweet peppers into tunnels, net structures and greenhouses in pursuit of the consistent yield, fruit quality and season length that open-field production struggles to deliver.

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eppers are grown in most of the country, with concentrations on the Gauteng Highveld and Lowveld, in Limpopo, Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal, and across the Western, Eastern and Northern Cape. The crop is warm-season and frost-sensitive, with a long growing period and tender, thin-skinned fruit that scorches easily in strong sun. Those same traits, including a dislike of temperature extremes and a vulnerability to sunburn, wind and hail, make peppers an unusually strong candidate for some form of protection. They also explain why so much of the recent investment in protected cropping in South Africa has gone into peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers rather than hardier crops.

By producing peppers under cover, growers gain a measure of control that the open field cannot match. Structures buffer the crop against wind, hail and temperature swings. They exclude many pests, reduce sunburn on developing fruit, and stretch the productive window well beyond the natural season. This means fruit can be supplied when open-field crops are unavailable, and prices are higher. Water use is also more efficient because less is lost to evaporation and wind, and because protected systems lend themselves to precise irrigation.

The cleaner, more controlled environment supports high pack-out percentages and the year-round supply that retail buyers increasingly expect. It also allows a grower to plan production against a programme rather than against the weather.

Quality, not just quantity, is driving much of this shift.

Peppers grown under cover are also more likely to reach the blocky shape and even the colour that the premium market wants. Just as important, growers can supply more consistent volumes. For a producer aiming at the top end of the market, a structure is not only a yield tool. It is also a quality tool.

A spectrum of protection Protected cropping is not a single thing but a ladder. At the lowest rung sits shade netting, which shields the crop from excessive radiation, hail and wind without the cost of a fully enclosed structure, and which many growers adopt first. Above it come plastic tunnels, which add a greater degree of climate buffering and pest exclusion. At the top sit fully climate-

controlled greenhouses, in which temperature, humidity and ventilation are actively managed. Many operations climb this ladder over time.

Growing without soil Alongside the move under cover has come a move away from soil. More protected peppers are now grown in media such as coir, sawdust or rockwool, or in hydroponic systems where nutrients are supplied in a carefully managed solution. South African research has described several systems that suit local conditions, including gravel, nutrient film, ebb-and-flow and deep-water culture. These systems are valued because they can produce more with less water and fertiliser. In a waterscarce country, that matters. It is one of the main reasons this type of production has spread, despite the higher cost and greater complexity.

Growing without soil can be unforgiving. The medium holds very little water or nutrition, so the crop has to be fed in small doses and at frequent intervals. Drip systems usually do this in short pulses. The strength and acidity of the feed also need close attention. When the balance is right, yields can be high and fruit can be very uniform. When it is wrong, problems show up quickly. There is no soil buffer to soften mistakes. This kind of production needs both the right equipment and the skill to use it well.

Inside a tunnel or greenhouse, the pepper is grown less like a bush and more like a vine. Plants are trained up high-wire trellising, and their stems are managed through the season.

Side shoots and lower leaves are removed to channel the plant’s energy into fruit and to open the canopy for light and air. A protected pepper crop is a long one, often reaching its first harvest about ten to fourteen weeks after planting and then cropping continuously for months. The plant is therefore built and maintained for the long haul rather than for a single flush. This intensive training helps lift yields well above openfield levels. It is also part of what makes the crop so labourdemanding.

The enclosed environment that protects the crop also has to be managed because the same structure that keeps out wind

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PEPPERS

Peppers move under cover as growers chase consistency FROM PAGE 9 and pests also keeps in heat and humidity. Daytime and nighttime temperatures, humidity and ventilation all have to stay within the ranges the crop prefers. Heat that climbs too high, or air that stays too damp, brings its own troubles, from poor fruit set to disease.

Ventilation, whether passive through vents or active through fans, is central. It also does double duty by moving air through the canopy in a way that helps the crop set fruit. The link between climate management and pollination is direct, and it is one of the defining challenges of growing peppers under cover. It is addressed in its own article in this section.

Grafting and rootstocks As the crop has intensified, grafting has begun to follow the path it took in greenhouse cucumbers and tomatoes. By joining a productive fruiting variety to a vigorous, disease-tolerant rootstock, growers can build plant vigour and resilience to soilborne problems, which matters most where the same fields are cropped season after season.

Growing under cover has also widened the choice of what to plant. Alongside the familiar blocky bell peppers, growers are planting more sweet pointed peppers and the small sweet snacking types that do well in punnets. Breeders have responded with varieties developed especially for protected, long-season production. These plants keep growing and producing fruit over many months instead of setting just one flush. They are bred for disease resistance, fruit quality and the stamina to carry on through a long season. Under cover, choosing the right variety is just as important as choosing the right structure. The plant has to match a system of ongoing training, feeding and picking.

The pest paradox under cover A structure that excludes pests does not banish them. The warm, sheltered environment that suits a pepper suits many of its enemies just as well. Aphids, thrips, whiteflies and spider mites can all build up rapidly under cover once they get in.

Some of them, especially thrips and whiteflies, also carry plant viruses that turn a pest problem into a disease problem.

The enclosed space that keeps pests out when managed well can become a refuge for them when management slips.

That is why protected production leans heavily on integrated pest management: monitoring with sticky traps and scouting, biological control using predatory and parasitic insects, strict hygiene, and chemicals used sparingly and selectively to spare beneficial insects and protect market residues.

Disease follows the same logic. The humidity that protected structures can trap favours fungal and bacterial diseases as well as the viruses discussed elsewhere in this section, so ventilation, plant spacing and canopy management are disease-control tools as much as climate tools. The grower who masters the environment inside the structure is managing pests and diseases at the same time, while the one who does not may find that the protection meant to safeguard the crop has sheltered its problems instead.

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Protected cropping makes sense only if the extra yield and quality repay a considerable investment. The capital cost of structures, trellising, irrigation and, at the upper end, climate control is substantial per hectare. That cost is carried whether or not the season goes well. The economics therefore depend on achieving the high, consistent yields of premium fruit that protection makes possible and on selling them into markets that reward quality and out-of-season supply.

For high-value coloured peppers aimed at retail and the premium trade, the sums increasingly add up, which is why those lines have led the move. For green fruit destined for the bulk market, open-field production often remains the more sensible choice. Each grower has to weigh the cost of the structure against the value of the crop it will carry and the markets it will open.

Water and the sustainability case In a country as water-scarce as South Africa, the efficiency of protected, soilless production is more than a cost saving; it is part of the sector’s longer-term licence to operate. Recirculating systems that capture and reuse the nutrient solution, drip fertigation that delivers water precisely to the root zone, and the reduced evaporation inside a structure together cut the water needed to grow a kilogram of fruit well below open-field levels.

Protected production also puts more pressure on people.

These systems need careful daily management. The long season calls for skilled work right through the crop, from training and pruning to pollination, monitoring and harvesting. There is also less room for error than in the open field. That raises both labour demand and the level of skill required. In the end, a structure is only as good as the people running it.

None of this comes cheaply. The capital outlay on structures, trellising, irrigation and climate control is significant; the en­ closed environment demands daily and precise management, and the labour and skill requirements are higher than in the open field. Energy, maintenance and the sheer complexity of running a controlled system all add to the cost, and a mistake under cover, in climate, feeding or hygiene, can be more costly than the same mistake outdoors because the crop is more valuable and the margin for error narrower.

The direction of travel, though, is clear. As markets demand consistent quality and year-round supply, as water grows scarcer and as the tools of protected cropping become more familiar, the share of South Africa’s pepper crop grown under some form of cover is set to keep rising. The supporting industries of seed, structures, growing media and crop monitoring are growing with it, and the knowledge base, much of it built by local research bodies and the growers themselves, is deepening season by season. The pepper, more than most vegetables, is leading South African horticulture under cover.

Sources consulted: ARC and KwaZulu-Natal Department of Agriculture capsicum production guidelines; South African soilless and recirculating-hydroponics research (including ARC work on protected vegetable production); protected-cropping and irrigation-industry information.

SOETRISSIES

Healthy pepper plants with high yield of red fruit.

Navigating the road to successful pepper production Every vegetable grower aims for profitable yields and premium-quality fruit. Yet along the journey there are signals that demand caution, patience and decisive action.

Johan Stronkhorst SAKATA

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he traffic light (or “robot”) provides an excellent metaphor for the three main colours in pepper production – not only for marketing the fruit, but also for managing production. The challenge for growers lies in knowing when to accelerate, when to proceed with caution and when to stop potential problems before they derail the crop.

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GREEN LIGHT: ESTABLISHING THE FOUNDATION Successful sweet pepper production begins with rapid, uniform seedling establishment. The first 6 to 8 weeks after transplanting determine the plants’ ability to develop a vigorous root system, a strong canopy and sufficient energy reserves to support flowering and fruit set. A strong vegetative structure is critical because the plant must carry a significant fruit load for an extended period before fruit reaches its final colour.

• Root growth During the establishment phase, the primary objective is to maximize root growth before driving vegetative growth. Healthy roots improve water uptake, nutrient absorption and plant resilience against environmental stresses and soil-borne diseases such as Phytophthora capsici.

Irrigation and soil Seedlings should experience minimal stress after transplanting through careful irrigation management, welldrained soils, optimal soil temperatures (20–25°C). Avoid waterlogging, which greatly increases disease pressure.

Nutrition • Phosphorus (P) is one of the Traffic light peppers.

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most critical elements du­ring establishment because it stimulates root initiation, root branching and early energy metabolism through ATP production. Although peppers require relatively modest quantities of phosphorus, it must be highly available in the root zone because young roots have limited ability to explore the soil.

Zinc (Zn) works closely with phosphorus by promoting root development, enzyme activation and auxin production, which regulates root elongation.

Nitrogen (N) should be supplied in moderate amounts during the first few weeks after transplanting. Excessive nitrogen encourages lush vegetative growth at the expense of root development, resulting in weak plants that are more susceptible to stress and delayed flowering. A balanced nitrate-to-ammonium ratio is preferred, with nitrate nitrogen supporting steady vegetative growth while avoiding excessive ammonium that may suppress calcium uptake.

Ammonium (NH4+) and calcium (Ca2+) are positively charged ions (cations). High concentrations of ammonium at the root zone overwhelm and outcompete calcium for absorption sites on the root.

Potassium (K) becomes increasingly important as vegetative growth accelerates. Potassium regulates water movement, stomatal function, carbohydrate transport and enzyme activation, laying the foundation for future fruit quality and plant resilience. Adequate potassium during early growth also improves stem strength and prepares the plant for the high demand that begins at flowering.

Calcium (Ca) is essential from the day of transplanting because every newly formed cell requires calcium for cell wall formation and membrane stability. Since calcium moves only with the transpiration stream, continuous uptake depends on healthy roots and consistent soil moisture. Deficiencies at this stage cannot be corrected later and often result in weaker plant structure and an increased risk of blossom-end rot during fruit development. Most of the visible Ca-deficiencies are only seen 6

TO PAGE 12 VEGETABLES & FRUIT | JULIE • AUGUSTUS 2026

11

PEPPERS

Navigating the road to successful pepper production FROM PAGE 11 weeks after the initial deficiency took place.

• Magnesium (Mg) should also be maintained at adequate levels to support chlorophyll formation and photosynthesis, enabling the plant to produce sufficient carbohydrates for rapid canopy development.

• Sulphur (S) complements nitrogen by supporting amino acid and protein synthesis, improving nitrogen use efficiency and overall plant vigour.

• Boron (B), among the micronutrients, becomes increasingly important as plants approach flowering because it supports cell division, sugar transport, pollen formation and flower fertility.

pers and the critical transition period during fruit maturation.

This is often the most challenging phase of production. Fruit remains on the plant longer, increasing exposure to, heat stress, water stress, sunburn, pest pressure and disease infections.

Growers must exercise patience. Harvesting fruit too early sacrifices colour premiums, while leaving fruit too long can increase losses due to quality defects.

The yellow light reminds growers to proceed carefully. Decisions regarding irrigation, nutrition, canopy management and crop protection become increasingly important as fruit moves toward full maturity.

RED LIGHT: THE DESTINATION AND THE DANGER By the time the first flower buds appear, the nutritional strategy should gradually shift from root establishment toward supporting reproductive growth. Balanced nitrogen applications should avoid excessive vegetative growth, while potassium, calcium, boron and magnesium become increasingly important to ensure strong flowering, successful pollination and the development of high-quality fruit. Growers who prioritize early root establishment and balanced nutrition create the physiological foundation for higher yields, improved fruit quality and greater tolerance to environmental and disease stresses throughout the production cycle.

Successful pollination is one of the most critical stages in sweet pepper production because it determines fruit set, fruit shape, seed development and ultimately yield. Although peppers are largely self-pollinating, effective pollen release and fertilisation depend on favourable environmental conditions, particularly temperatures between 20 and 28 °C, moderate humidity between 50 and 70% and adequate air movement or insect activity to assist pollen transfer.

Nutritionally, boron is essential for pollen viability and pollen tube growth, while calcium supports cell division in the developing fruit immediately after fertilisation. Potassium provides the energy and carbohydrate transport needed to sustain the rapidly developing fruit and adequate phosphorus ensures sufficient ATP production for these energy-intensive processes.

Any stress during flowering, including excessive heat, cold, water stress, nutrient deficiencies, or poor pollination, can result in flower abortion, poor fruit set, misshapen peppers, or reduced fruit size.

Maintaining optimal plant health and minimizing stress during this period is therefore essential for achieving maximum yield and premium-quality peppers.

Many growers underestimate the importance of the green light stage. However, weak root systems, nutrient imbalances, or excessive vegetative growth during this period often result in poor fruit set and reduced colour development later in the season.

The green light stage is where the journey begins and any mistakes made here often become costly at the yellow and red stages.

YELLOW LIGHT: PROCEED WITH CAUTION The yellow light represents both yellow and red coloured pep-

12 VEGETABLES & FRUIT | JULY • AUGUST 2026

The final stage of sweet pepper production is colour development, during which the fruit transitions from green to its mature colour – red, yellow or orange, depending on the variety. This ripening phase is characterised by the breakdown of chlorophyll and the rapid accumulation of carotenoid pigments, which are responsible for the fruits’ vibrant colour and increased nutritional value. Although fruit size has largely been determined by this stage, the plant requires a continuous supply of potassium to transport sugar into the fruit, enhance colour intensity, improve firmness and extend shelf life.

Adequate calcium remains essential for maintaining cell wall strength and reducing post-harvest disorders, while magnesium supports continued photosynthesis, allowing the plant to produce the carbohydrates needed for complete ripening.

Consistent irrigation is critical, as fluctuations in soil moisture can lead to fruit cracking, reduced firmness and uneven colouring. Healthy foliage must also be maintained because the leaves continue to produce the energy required for pigment formation and sugar accumulation.

Environmental conditions, particularly warm days, cool nights and good light intensity, accelerate uniform colour development, while excessive heat, nutrient imbalances, disease, or plant stress can delay ripening and reduce fruit quality. Successful management during this final stage ensures peppers achieve their maximum colour, flavour, nutritional quality, market value and post-harvest performance.

Red or coloured peppers often achieve the highest market value because of their sweetness, appearance and consumer preference. However, they also represent the longest investment period for growers. The longer fruit remains on the plant, the greater the risk of disease, exposure to environmental stress and potential for yield losses. Every additional day required to achieve full red colour increases production costs and management complexity. For many growers, the red stage is where profitability is either secured or lost.

The red warning light: Phytophthora capsici If there is one warning signal that every pepper grower should respect, it is Phytophthora capsici. This soilborne pathogen attacks roots, stems and fruit, often cause wilting and plant collapse. Severe outbreaks can rapidly destroy entire fields or greenhouse blocks. By the time visible symptoms appear, significant infection may already have occurred below ground.

Phytophthora capsici on a pepper plant.

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Red signals: Standing water, wilting plants, rapid disease spread and Phytophthora outbreaks.

Several characteristics make Phytophthora capsici particularly difficult to manage. It survives in soil for extended periods through resilient survival structures. It spreads rapidly in waterlogged conditions. Heavy rainfall and poor drainage accelerate disease outbreaks. Successful management requires an integrated approach, including excellent drainage, improved field drainage and bed design, crop rotation, resistant varieties and preventative fungicides.

Successful pepper growers constantly monitor the signals around them Green signals: Strong roots, balanced nutrition, uniform plant growth and consistent fruit set.

Yellow signals: Rising disease pressure, heat stress, delayed colour development and increasing pest populations.

The ability to recognise these signals early, often determines whether a season ends profitably or with significant losses.

Producing coloured peppers is not simply about growing a crop; it is about navigating a complex journey from green to yellow or red. The green light encourages growers to establish a strong foundation. The yellow light reminds them to proceed with caution during the critical maturation period. The red light represents both the reward of premium-quality fruit and the warning signs of potential threats.

Among all the challenges facing pepper growers, few are more serious than Phytophthora capsici. Like a flashing red warning light at a dangerous intersection, this pathogen demands immediate attention, disciplined management and pro­active decision-making. Ultimately, successful pepper production depends on reading the signals correctly, responding quickly to emerging challenges and keeping the crop moving steadily toward its final destination: a healthy, profitable harvest of premium green, yellow and red peppers.

DISCLAIMER: This information is based on Sakata’s observations and/or information from other sources. As crop performance depends on the interaction between the genetic potential of the seed, its physiological characteristics, and the environment, including management, Sakata SA give no warranty express or implied, for the performance of crops relative to the information given nor do the company accept any liability for any loss, direct or consequential, that may arise from whatsoever cause. Please read the Sakata Seed Southern Africa (Pty) Ltd Conditions of Sale before ordering seed.

13

PEPPERS

Brown rugose virus puts pepper biosecurity to the test Tomato brown rugose fruit virus, known as ToBRFV, has become one of the most closely watched threats in protected vegetable production. Pepper growers are very much at risk.

T

he tomato brown rugose fruit virus infects both tomato and pepper, and it has spread across Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas. That spread has landed it on quarantine pest lists in many countries and prompted emergency control measures in major markets. For a South African industry mo­ ving steadily under cover, ToBRFV is a serious test of biosecurity.

ToBRFV belongs to the tobamovirus group, the same family as the better-known tobacco and tomato mosaic viruses. What makes this group so difficult is its stability. These viruses do not need insects to spread. They can survive for long periods on surfaces, tools and plant debris, and they move through simple contact.

That means everyday work in a pepper crop, such as handling, pruning, training and harvesting, can spread the virus from plant to plant on hands, gloves, clothing and equipment.

The virus can also travel on seed, which is how it has moved between countries through the global seed trade.

What set ToBRFV apart from its relatives, and what alarmed the industry, was its ability to overcome resistance that growers had relied on for decades. In tomato, the established resistance genes that had held earlier tobamoviruses in check do not stop it.

Peppers have their own genetic resistance to tobamoviruses, governed by a different set of genes, and some pepper varieties carry useful resistance. However, the response of pepper to ToBRFV varies between cultivars, and research continues to clarify how durable that protection is. Pepper plants can also be infected while showing few obvious symptoms. This makes them a quiet reservoir from which the virus can spread, and a reason to treat the crop with caution even when it looks healthy.

The symptoms that give the virus its name appear on the fruit: brown, wrinkled, rugose patches, marbling and uneven ripening, and deformation that renders fruit unmarketable.

14 VEGETABLES & FRUIT | JULY • AUGUST 2026

On the foliage, infected plants may show mosaic and mottling, narrowing and distortion of leaves, and a general loss of vigour. Necrosis on the calyces, stalks and growing points can cause flowers and young fruit to drop before they mature.

The combined effect is a double blow of reduced yield and reduced quality, and because the virus moves so readily through a crop, an outbreak that begins in a corner of a tunnel can spread across it during the normal round of crop work.

The routes of spread all point back to contact and contamination. Infected seed or seedlings can introduce the virus to a clean operation; once present, it moves on hands, tools, clothing and equipment, and through plant-to-plant contact.

Its stability means it persists in the growing environment, with residues detected on surfaces and materials in and around greenhouses, including places untouched by plants or people.

No spray cures an infected plant. The entire defence therefore rests on keeping the virus out and, if it gets in, stopping it spreading, which makes ToBRFV a problem of hygiene and management rather than of chemistry.

One transmission route discussed heavily abroad is, helpfully, less relevant in South Africa. In European glasshouses, bumblebees used for pollination have been shown to carry the virus from plant to plant as they work. South African growers do not use bumblebees. That narrows the problem, but it also concentrates it squarely on worker hygiene and clean inputs, the two things most within a grower’s control.

Because several tobamoviruses produce broadly similar symptoms, and because pepper infections can be mild or hidden, laboratory diagnosis matters. Molecular and serological tests can confirm the presence of ToBRFV and distinguish it from related viruses such as pepper mild mottle virus. Growers who suspect an infection are far better served by a confirmed diagnosis than by guesswork.

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as the crops themselves. Tobamoviruses persist on structures, supports, tools, trays and debris long after a crop is removed, so a new planting set into a contaminated house can be infected from the structure alone, without any infected plant nearby. A thorough end-of-crop clean-up is therefore central to control. The discipline of starting each crop in a genuinely clean house breaks the bridge by which the virus would otherwise carry from one season to the next.

Because the virus moves on hands, clothing and tools, the people working in the crop are both its main vector and its main line of defence. Training workers to understand how it spreads, to follow hygiene routines, and to recognise and report unusual symptoms turns the workforce from a risk into a safeguard.

The economics of prevention

The tomato brown rugose fruit virus infects both tomato and pepper, and it has spread across Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas.

The lines of defence For a seedborne virus, the single most important precaution is clean planting material. Seed and seedlings should be sourced from reputable suppliers who test for the virus and can assure clean stock, because no amount of on-farm hygiene can fully compensate for introducing the virus on the plants themselves.

Once a clean crop is in the ground, keeping it clean is a matter of relentless routine. Because the virus is so stable, disinfection has to be thorough and to use agents known to be effective against tobamoviruses rather than ordinary cleaning products. Tools and hands should be disinfected regularly and between blocks, footbaths placed at entry points, and the movement of workers and visitors controlled so that infection is not carried from one house to another.

Where infection appears, prompt removal of affected plants, careful handling to avoid spreading sap, and a thorough cleandown of structures, supports and equipment between crops all help to break the chain.

ToBRFV’s rise has been startlingly fast. Unknown until little more than a decade ago, it was identified in the Middle East and within a few years had been reported across Europe, the Americas, Asia and Africa, an expansion driven above all by the global trade in seed and young plants. Because the virus is seedborne, and because infected pepper plants can carry it with few obvious symptoms, it was able to move between countries undetected before its significance was understood, hitching a ride on the very material that modern vegetable production depends on.

Persistence and the end-of-crop clean-up The virus’s stability makes the gaps between crops as important

All of this asks time, money and discipline, and it is worth setting against the alternative. An established infection cannot be cured, can cut both the yield and the marketable quality of a crop, and can force a costly clean-out and lost production while a house is taken out of use. Measured against that, the cost of clean certified seed, of disinfection routines and of worker training is modest, and the case for treating biosecurity as a standing investment rather than an emergency response is straightforward.

Brown rugose virus is the most prominent virus threat of the moment, but it is not the only one. Peppers can also be affected by other tobamoviruses and by insect-transmitted viruses spread by aphids, thrips and whiteflies. The same habits that help contain brown rugose virus therefore strengthen the crop’s wider defences too.

Vigilance pays, because early detection keeps an outbreak small. Growers and staff should watch for the tell-tale signs, the mosaic and narrowing of leaves, the brown wrinkled patches and uneven ripening on fruit, the necrosis on calyces and the unexplained dropping of flowers and young fruit, and should treat any cluster of such symptoms as a reason to isolate the area and seek a laboratory diagnosis rather than to spray and hope.

Plant breeders have responded to the threat, and tolerant or resistant varieties are emerging for both tomato and pepper. These are valuable, but they are best treated as one component of an integrated defence rather than as a licence to relax, both because the durability of resistance against a virus that has already defeated one set of resistance genes cannot be taken for granted, and because a tolerant plant can still carry and spread the virus.

The settled message from plant-health authorities is consistent: ToBRFV is managed, not cured, through clean material, strict hygiene and vigilance, supported where possible by resistant varieties. Anyone who suspects it should seek a laboratory diagnosis and treat it with the seriousness an incurable, contact-spread virus demands. The pepper growers who fare best will be those who build biosecurity into daily routine, well before there is any sign of trouble.

Sources consulted: EPPO global pest status and emergencymeasure listings; ToBRFV research published in Plant Pathology (Giesbers et al.) and related peer-reviewed journals; guidance on tobamovirus hygiene and seed health.

VEGETABLES & FRUIT | JULIE • AUGUSTUS 2026

15

PEPPERS

The economics of colour in the pepper crop Every sweet pepper starts green. Whether it reaches the market green, red, yellow or orange is partly a matter of cultivar and partly a decision the grower makes about time, risk and price.

That decision, repeated across a whole crop and a whole season, sits at the heart of the economics of pepper production, and it rewards growers who understand both the biology behind the colour and the market that pays for it.

C

olour is not a separate crop but a stage of ripeness.

Green peppers are harvested at the mature-green stage, full-sized and firm, but before the colour change. Coloured peppers are left on the plant to ripen fully, which takes additional weeks. Those extra weeks are where the cost lies: a fruit held on the plant longer ties up the plant’s resources, exposes itself to more pests, disease and sunburn, and reduces the total number of fruit the plant can turn over in a season.

The grower trades volume and speed for the higher value of a coloured fruit, and the trade is only worthwhile if the premium covers the cost and the added risk.

The biochemistry behind the colour What happens during those extra weeks is more than a colour change. As the fruit ripens, the green chlorophyll breaks down, and new pigments build up. In yellow and orange peppers, these pigments belong to the carotenoid family, which also gives colour to carrots and egg yolks. In red peppers, other red pigments become dominant as ripening continues.

The total pigment content rises sharply as the fruit turns from green to full colour. In other words, the change is happening throughout the fruit, not only on the skin.

Cultivar genetics decide where this process ends. Most peppers ripen from green through to red, but breeding has produced the full palette the market now expects, from yellow and orange types in which the red pigments never form, to specialty purple, brown and ivory fruit, and even varieties bred to stay green at maturity.

The same ripening that changes colour also changes flavour: as a pepper colours, some of its starches convert to sugars, so a fully red pepper is noticeably sweeter than the green fruit it began as, and its content of vitamin C and provitaminA carotenoids is higher. Colour, sweetness and nutrition rise together, which is part of why coloured fruit commands its premium.

Against the premium sits a real cost, and it is more than just time. A coloured crop yields fewer kilograms per plant over a season than a green one picked early and often, because each fruit occupies the plant for longer.

Harvesting is more demanding too: coloured fruit is picked selectively, fruit by fruit as each reaches full colour, over several

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passes through the crop, which costs more in labour than the cleaner, earlier harvest of green fruit. And the grading is stricter, because a fruit sold on its colour is judged on the evenness and intensity of that colour as well as on its shape.

Grade, shape and handling The market favours large, blocky, four-lobed fruit with even, intense colour, and these command the best prices, particularly at the premium and export end. Fruit that colours unevenly, that comes off the plant misshapen, or that carries any sun scarring drops in grade and value. Late-season fruit, which tends to run smaller, thinner-walled and more pointed, is harder to place at the top of the market.

Ripe coloured fruit is also more delicate than firm green fruit: it bruises and wilts more readily and must be picked, graded and cooled with care, since a wilted pepper does not recover its condition. The discipline of careful handling through the cold chain is part of the true cost of selling on colour.

Sunburn is the quiet enemy of coloured production in the open field. During the long ripening period the exposed fruit can be scarred by intense sun, pulling down pack-outs precisely on the fruit the grower has invested the most time in. That is one reason coloured peppers often perform better under cover, where a more even climate helps protect the fruit and improve colour uniformity.

The colours are not interchangeable in the market’s eyes.

Green peppers anchor the everyday cooking market and move in the largest volumes; red, yellow and orange peppers serve the premium fresh trade and the eye-catching mixed-colour packs that retailers favour; and specialty colours, the purples, browns and ivories produced by particular cultivars, occupy niches that reward novelty.

Each colour carries its own typical price, its own shelf appeal and its own seasonal pattern of supply and demand, and a grower planning a season is in effect planning a portfolio of colours, balancing the steady mover against the premium earner and matching the mix to the markets being served.

Knowing when to pick is its own skill. Green peppers are taken once they reach full size and firmness at the maturegreen stage, while coloured peppers are left until the colour has developed fully and evenly, since a half-coloured fruit satis-

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fies neither the green market nor the coloured one.

Judging maturity, by colour cover, by firmness and by size, and picking selectively as each fruit is ready, is what keeps the pack uniform and the grade high, and it is one reason coloured production is more labour-intensive: the crop is walked and picked over many times rather than stripped in a single pass.

Colour does not end the grower’s responsibility; it raises it.

Peppers are living tissue that continues to respire after picking, losing water, firmness and gloss if not cooled and handled properly, with fully coloured fruit more perishable than green.

Prompt cooling, careful handling to avoid bruising, and an unbroken cold chain preserve the appearance and shelf life that the premium price assumes.

Peppers will continue to colour somewhat after picking, but the best colour, flavour and quality come from fruit ripened on the plant and then looked after, which is why postharvest care is part of the economics of colour rather than an afterthought to it.

Choosing cultivars for a colour programme Behind every colour decision lies a cultivar decision. Varieties differ in their final colour, in how quickly and evenly they colour, in fruit size, wall thickness and shape, and in their resistance to the diseases and disorders that mar appearance.

Matching cultivar to the intended colour, the growing system and the market window is the first move in a coloured-pepper strategy, made long before the first fruit begins to turn.

Consumer tastes are shifting in ways that favour colour.

The small, sweet snacking peppers sold in mixed-colour punnets have grown in popularity, prized for convenience and sweetness, and they command a premium that rewards the colour, flavour and uniformity that careful production delivers.

This trend, part of a wider move toward convenient, healthy, ready-to-eat fresh produce, has given growers a reason to invest in coloured and speciality types and in the protected production that brings them reliably to grade.

The sweetness that accompanies colour is part of the appeal. Because a ripening pepper converts starches to sugars, a

fully coloured fruit is sweeter than the green fruit it began as.

That sweetness, together with the higher content of vitamin C and provitamin-A carotenoids in ripe fruit, gives coloured peppers a genuine eating-quality and nutritional advantage that growers and marketers can legitimately promote.

Yield and risk move in the opposite direction to all this added value, which is the tension at the centre of the colour decision. Every week a fruit spends ripening on the plant is a week of exposure and a week the plant cannot spend setting and filling its next fruit, so the grower is always weighing the rising value of a colouring fruit against the falling efficiency of the plant that carries it and the accumulating risk of loss.

Appearance can also be undone by physiological disorders that have nothing to do with pests or disease. Blossom-end rot, linked to calcium movement under uneven watering, sunscald on exposed fruit, and blotchy or uneven ripening can all pull a fruit out of grade however well it is grown. Coloured fruit, held longer on the plant, has more time to develop them.

Set out plainly, the colour decision is a clear trade-off. Green peppers offer speed, lower cost and steadier, more predictable turnover, and they remain the backbone of the bulk market.

Coloured peppers offer a higher price for a longer wait and a greater gamble, with more inputs, more risk and more demanding harvest and handling along the way.

Many growers run both, using green production for reliable cash flow and coloured production for margin, and some build mixed-colour packs that command attention on the shelf. The growers who profit most from colour are those who match cultivar, growing method and market timing so that the premium more than covers the added cost and risk, and who increasingly use protection to tilt that balance in their favour.

Understood this way, colour is not merely an attribute of the fruit but a strategy for the whole crop.

Sources consulted: ARC and KwaZulu-Natal Department of Agriculture capsicum production and grading guidelines; carotenoid and fruit-colour research published in the Journal of Experimental Botany and related journals; South African freshproduce market practice.

VEGETABLES & FRUIT | JULIE • AUGUSTUS 2026

17

DECIDUOUS FRUIT

Winter chill and dormancy: growing northern trees in a southern climate South Africa’s commercial apples, pears, plums, peaches and nectarines all come from trees shaped by a very different world: the cold winters of the northern hemisphere.

HORTGRO

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hese are trees built for winter shutdown. They survive freezing conditions by switching off, and they only return to the season properly once they have had enough cold.

South Africa’s main fruit regions sit at about 30 degrees south, far from the colder zones where these crops evolved.

That gap helps explain why winter chill and dormancy are central to where fruit can be grown and how reliably orchards perform.

Dormancy is a survival strategy. Deciduous trees from cold climates drop their leaves in autumn and enter a resting state that protects them through winter. They resume growth in spring once conditions are safe.

Researchers describe this process in three overlapping pha­ ses. In the first, often called para-dormancy, growth is held back by signals from other parts of the plant, such as actively growing shoot tips. In the second phase, the true rest phase known as endo-dormancy, the buds themselves are locked down and will not grow even if the weather turns warm. Winter chill releases them from this state. In the third phase, ecodormancy, the buds are ready to grow and are simply waiting for enough warmth to push out.

The amount of cold a tree needs to move through this rest phase is known as its chilling requirement, and it varies by crop and cultivar. High-chill apples need long, cold winters.

Low-chill peaches can manage with far less. When the requirement is met, trees tend to wake evenly, flower well and set a manageable crop.

When winter chill falls short, the orchard shows it quickly.

Bud-break becomes delayed and uneven, so a single tree can carry flowers and young shoots at several stages at once.

Flowering becomes erratic and sparse. Fruit set suffers, and the fruit that does form is often uneven in size and maturity.

That complicates everything from thinning to harvest to packing.

Research published through Hortgro Science makes the point plainly: deciduous trees in South Africa can survive without adequate winter chill, but commercial production becomes unviable unless growers intervene. In a warm year, in a marginal area, a poor chill season can undo much of a grower’s investment.

Poor dormancy release can also follow the fruit beyond the orchard. Uneven ripening often carries through to the

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packhouse and cold store, showing up as variable quality and shorter shelf life.

Measuring something invisible For all its importance, chill is remarkably difficult to measure.

Several models exist to convert winter temperatures into an estimate of accumulated chill. The simplest, the chilling hours model, counts the hours below a set temperature.

The widely used Utah model, developed in the 1970s, is more sophisticated. It assigns different weightings to different temperatures and allows warm spells to cancel out chill already banked. The dynamic model expresses chill in units called chill portions. It tries to capture the way moderate cold can be undone or locked in by the temperatures that follow.

The catch is that a model calibrated for one climate does not necessarily hold in another. South African researchers found that the standard Utah model performs poorly in the warmer local regions, where winter daytime temperatures above 20 degrees Celsius are common. Under those conditions, the model records large negative totals as warm afternoons cancel out cold nights, and the result drifts away from what the trees actually experience.

In response, Linsley-Noakes, Louw and Allan developed the daily positive Utah chill unit model, which sums chill over each 24-hour period and, crucially, never lets a day’s total go below zero. A day that comes out negative simply counts as nothing, rather than erasing chill banked earlier. This locally adapted approach has become a practical standard for estimating chill in South African conditions.

The deeper problem with chill models Even the best chill model rests on an assumption that can break down in a warm South African winter. As pome and stone fruit specialist Dr Nigel Cook has noted, dormancy has both an entrance and an exit. In cold climates, trees enter deep rest quickly, making it easier to decide when to start counting chill. In warmer regions, that entry is slower and less clear-cut, which means the final figure can mislead if counting starts at the wrong time. That is why local researchers treat chill models as guides rather than precision instruments, especially in the marginal areas where growers need certainty most.

Chilling requirement varies widely across the deciduous crops grown locally, which is why some thrive in one district and fail a short distance away. Among pome fruit, many of the

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apple cultivars that anchor the South African industry, including Granny Smith, Golden Delicious and the Cripps selections marketed as Pink Lady, carry relatively high chill requirements and are most at home in the colder districts.

Pears such as Packham’s Triumph and the popular blushed Forelle also need a solid winter. Among stone fruit, Japanese plums span a range of requirements, while many peaches and nectarines have been bred down to low chill requirements that let them be grown in warmer areas where apples would struggle. Matching the crop and the cultivar to the chill a site can reliably deliver, is the first line of defence against a disappointing orchard.

The mechanism behind all of this remains only partly understood, even after two centuries of research into the breaking of dormancy. What is clear is that the resting bud is held in check by internal signals, and that exposure to cold gradually dismantles those brakes until the bud is competent to grow once warmth arrives.

Chill models are imperfect precisely because they estimate this hidden process from air temperature alone, without being able to see inside the bud. For the grower, the practical upshot is that chill is real and consequential even though it cannot be observed directly, which places a premium on good recordkeeping and local experience alongside the models.

For all their limitations, chill estimates do real work in one of the most expensive decisions a grower makes: which cultivar to plant where. Chilling requirement is a primary filter in matching a cultivar to a region. High-chill cultivars belong in the colder areas such as the Koue Bokkeveld and the higher parts of Ceres, while warmer districts suit lower-chill selections.

Planting a high-chill cultivar in a marginal area is one of the costliest mistakes in deciduous fruit growing, because the orchard will underperform for its entire productive life, and the error is only fully visible years after the trees go in. Reliable chill information, region by region, is therefore part of the foundation of a sound planting decision.

Chill is not uniform even within a district. Cold air drains into valleys and hollows on still winter nights, so low-lying blocks may bank more chill than the slopes above them, while aspect, altitude and distance from the coast all shift the local picture. Experienced growers treat chill as a site-by-site variable rather than a regional average, which is why a new orchard’s position in the landscape forms part of the chill calculation long before the first tree goes into the ground.

Helping trees along Where natural chill is marginal, growers do not simply accept the consequences. Rest-breaking treatments, applied as sprays in late winter, are used to compensate for inadequate chilling and to pull a more even bud-break out of trees that would otherwise wake slowly and unevenly. The timing of these treatments is critical and depends on how the season has unfolded, which brings the discussion back to chill monitoring.

Many growers, and the insurers who carry some of their

risk, track chill accumulation through the winter precisely so that they can judge when, and whether, to intervene. Used well, rest-breaking can rescue evenness in a poor chill year; used carelessly, it can do more harm than good, which is why it sits alongside good cultivar choice rather than replacing it.

In practice, managing chill is a winter-long exercise in reading the season rather than a single calculation. Growers combine the output of a chill model with local weather records and their own observation of the trees, watching how buds swell and how evenly the orchard is moving toward budbreak, and they weigh all of this when deciding whether a rest-breaking treatment is needed and when to apply it. A cold winter may need no intervention at all, while a mild one may call for carefully timed action across several blocks. The same reading informs the spring ahead, because an orchard that has had a marginal chill season is likely to flower unevenly and will need closer attention through pollination, fruit set and thinning. Chill therefore stays in play right through the early season, well beyond the midwinter weeks when it is measured.

A warming winter The chill challenge is not static, and the direction of travel is unfavourable. Mean temperatures in South Africa have risen over the past century, and climate projections for the Western Cape fruit regions point to a continued decline in the winter chill that growers can count on. Work using the daily positive Utah chill unit model for apple districts has shown accumulated chill trending downward, with some areas already only marginally meeting requirements in current conditions.

As winters warm, the band of country in which a given high-chill cultivar can be grown reliably is expected to narrow, pushing growers toward lower-chill cultivars, toward cooler sites, and toward a heavier reliance on rest-breaking and careful monitoring.

Deciduous fruit still has a future in South Africa, but the margin for error is narrowing, and that raises the premium on good science. Research through Hortgro Science and Stellenbosch University continues to refine chill models, to improve the prediction of bud-break, and to support breeding and selection of cultivars better suited to a warmer climate.

For growers, the practical message is consistent: treat winter chill as a central planning variable, match cultivars honestly to the chill a site can deliver, monitor accumulation through the season, and use rest-breaking as a measured tool rather than a routine crutch. The growers who manage dormancy well are the ones best placed to keep producing quality fruit as the climate that their northern-hemisphere trees were built for slowly slips further out of reach.

Sources consulted: Hortgro Science and Fresh Quarterly articles on winter dormancy and chill models (research reported by Anna Mouton, with input from Dr Nigel Cook and Stellenbosch University); the daily positive Utah chill unit model (Linsley-Noakes, Louw and Allan, 1995; Linsley-Noakes, Allan and Matthee, 1994); peer-reviewed studies on climate change and accumulated chill at South African fruit sites.

VEGETABLES & FRUIT | JULIE • AUGUSTUS 2026

19

DECIDUOUS FRUIT

Choosing the right rootstock for apples and pears In any apple or pear orchard, most of the attention goes to the fruiting variety above ground, the part buyers recognise and growers market. But the real story often starts below the soil surface. The rootstock, onto which that variety is grafted, has an outsized say in how vigorously the tree grows, how quickly it starts cropping, how efficiently it turns size into yield, and how well it handles the soil and climate it is planted into.

HORTGRO

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hoosing the right rootstock is one of the longest-lasting decisions a grower makes. Once planted, that choice shapes the orchard for years. A rootstock is far more than a set of roots. Its first and most visible job is to control vigour.

Different rootstocks can produce trees that range from highly dwarfing to fully vigorous, even when the fruiting cultivar stays the same. A rootstock also influences precocity, the age at which a young tree begins to crop, and yield efficiency, the amount of fruit produced for a given tree size.

Below the surface, it provides anchorage and takes up water and nutrients. It also carries varying degrees of tolerance to root pests and diseases, including woolly apple aphid, crown rot and root rot. Finally, it affects how well a tree copes with the soil it finds itself in, from poor drainage and difficult pH to the stresses of replanting on an old orchard site.

The South African challenge In South Africa, choosing that hidden half of the tree is more complicated than it is in the classic cool, deep-soiled fruit regions of the north.

South African apple trees tend to show pronounced basal dominance under low-chill conditions. Soils are often poor and highly variable, and the climate is warm. Rising production costs and international competition have pushed the industry toward more precocious, more yield-efficient rootstocks that tolerate marginal soils and warm conditions. These rootstocks also support the high-density planting systems used in the industry’s Orchard of the Future programme.

There was a time when conventional wisdom held that dwarfing rootstocks would never work in South Africa, on the reasoning that small trees would be too vulnerable to drought stress and sunburn. The industry’s own Orchard of the Future plantings, and the research that followed, showed those fears to be largely unfounded. Dwarfing rootstocks and

20 VEGETABLES & FRUIT | JULY • AUGUST 2026

high-density plantings have instead delivered earlier financial returns, greater orchard efficiency and improved fruit quality, with the sunburn risk on smaller, more exposed canopies managed through other means rather than avoided by growing big trees.

One of the quiet reasons rootstock choice matters so much in South Africa is that a great deal of new planting happens on land that has grown fruit before. Old orchard sites are prone to replant problems, in which a complex of soil-borne organisms and the legacy of the previous orchard stunts young trees, and difficult soils with poor drainage or awkward pH add to the burden. A rootstock’s tolerance of these conditions, together with its resistance to root pests such as woolly apple aphid and to crown and root rot, can be the difference between a vigorous young block and a struggling one.

Where pressure is severe, growers may prepare replant sites carefully before planting, but a well-chosen, tolerant rootstock does much of the work from below, season after season, without further intervention.

The apple rootstock toolbox South African apple growers draw on a well-established palette of rootstocks. The vigorous Merton and Malling-Merton selections, among them M793, MM106 and MM109, all bred in England at East Malling and the John Innes Institute at Merton for resistance to woolly apple aphid, have long served as workhorses, valued for their adaptability to variable soils.

At the dwarfing end sits M9, a French Paradise stock standardised at East Malling, and its various clones, the international benchmark for high-density planting, sometimes used as an interstem on a more vigorous root system to combine soil tolerance with size control.

Alongside these, the industry has been evaluating the Geneva range bred from 1968 by the Cornell University programme at Geneva, New York, selections such as G222 and G202 at the dwarfing end and G228 and G778 with more

SAGTEVRUGTE vigour, many of them carrying resistance to fire blight, crown and root rot, and woolly apple aphid.

Local evaluation has produced encouraging results. In Hortgro-funded trials, rootstocks including M9 RN29, the MM109 and M9 interstem combination, and G778 have proved considerably more yield-efficient than their tree size alone would suggest, with G778 looking promising for weaker sites and lower densities and the dwarfing Geneva selections suited to high-density blocks on better ground.

Caution is still warranted. Some Geneva rootstocks remain subject to plant breeders’ rights and variety-listing processes in South Africa and are not yet fully released, and researchers have flagged that viruses carried in scion material can be associated with weak graft unions on certain rootstocks, a reminder that clean planting material matters as much as the choice of rootstock itself.

The harder problem of pears Pears present a tougher challenge, because the pear industry has never had a rootstock that does for it what M9 does for apples, combining strong dwarfing with high precocity and yield efficiency.

South Africa’s most important contribution to the field is home-grown. The BP series of pear rootstocks was bred locally, with BP1 selected from a seedling of a wild pear at Elsenburg in the Western Cape in the 1930s by Dr AF de Wet. BP1 produces a semi-dwarf tree, roughly a quarter smaller than one on a seedling rootstock, with high yield efficiency and compatibility with all the major commercial pear cultivars. It can be propagated from hardwood cuttings, though it is not the easiest rootstock to root, and it has been taken up internationally as well as at home.

Beyond the BP series, growers can choose vigorous seedling rootstocks, the American Old Home by Farmingdale selections, bred in Oregon for resistance to fire blight, and the dwarfing East Malling quinces widely used for intensive pear planting elsewhere. Quince brings useful size control but is incompatible with many European pear cultivars, which then have to be grown with a compatible interstem, adding cost and complexity.

The search for a genuine dwarfing, precocious pear rootstock continues, and research into the genetic control of vigour and precocity in pear, including loci comparable to the dwarfing genes identified in apple, is aimed squarely at breeding the pear equivalent of M9 that the industry still lacks.

How rootstocks are tested locally Because a rootstock decision lasts the life of an orchard, South Africa invests in evaluating candidates under local conditions before recommending them. Hortgro Science runs rootstock evaluation sites across the main pome fruit regions, with a more dwarfing and an adjacent more vigorous planting at each, in districts including Grabouw, the Langkloof, Ceres and the Witzenberg Valley. These industry-funded trials, run with SAPO Trust and through the Provar evaluation programme, assess how each rootstock grows and crops in real orchard conditions.

The system is not perfect, as Steyn has acknowledged:

rootstocks have historically been grafted onto only a few cultivars and not always tested across every major region and soil type, which is why the evaluation protocol itself has been under review. Still, this body of local data is what allows growers to choose on evidence rather than on hope.

That matters financially. In high-density orchards, precocity can shorten the wait for a return on a costly establishment investment.

Because so much rests on the rootstock, the integrity of the planting material is critical. Virus-tested, certified rootstocks and scion wood reduce the risk of graft-union weakness and poor performance that infected material can cause, and South Africa’s certification structures, run through SAPO Trust, exist to give growers confidence in what they plant.

A saving on uncertified material is a false economy when the orchard is expected to perform for two decades or more.

The rootstock also interacts with the quality of the nursery tree itself, since high-density systems perform best when planted with well-grown, well-feathered young trees that already carry the side shoots from which early fruit will hang. A weak tree on an excellent rootstock wastes much of the rootstock’s advantage in the critical first seasons.

Rootstock sets the baseline vigour of a tree, but site and management still shape the result. The same rootstock can behave very differently on deep, fertile soil than on a weak, shallow site. Growers then adjust through pruning, irrigation, nutrition and crop load, making rootstock choice and orchard management two sides of the same decision.

Matching rootstock to site and system In practice, there is no single best rootstock, only the right rootstock for a particular site, cultivar and growing system. A dwarfing, precocious rootstock such as M9 or a comparable Geneva selection suits a high-density planting on good soil, with trellis support and reliable irrigation, where the goal is early returns and easy management of a narrow canopy. A more vigorous rootstock such as M793, MM109 or G778 makes better sense on weaker or more variable soils, on replant sites, or where a grower plants at lower density.

The trade-offs are real: smaller trees crop sooner and are easier to work and mechanise, but they demand a support structure, careful irrigation and, because their fruit is more exposed, attention to sunburn protection. Bigger trees are more forgiving of difficult soils but slower to pay back the establishment cost.

The practical advice that emerges from the research is consistent. Growers should treat rootstock selection as a deliberate match between the demands of the site, the cultivar and the intended planting system, lean on the local evaluation data rather than on reputation alone, and insist on clean, certified planting material. A well-matched rootstock gives the cultivar above it the best possible chance, while a poor match is something no amount of above-ground management can undo across the life of the orchard.

Sources consulted: Hortgro Science Orchard of the Future programme and rootstock evaluation reports (Prof Wiehann Steyn); SAPO Trust and Provar apple and pear rootstock evaluations; Cornell University Geneva apple rootstock programme; ISHS research on yield-efficient rootstocks for the South African apple industry (Siboza, Kotze, Cook and Steyn, 2018); plant breeders’ rights and variety-listing status via SAPO Trust.

VEGETABLES & FRUIT | JULIE • AUGUSTUS 2026

21

DECIDUOUS FRUIT

Designing the orchard: architecture, light and the South African balance At heart, an orchard is a machine for turning sunlight into fruit. How that machine is built matters. Tree spacing, training, support and canopy shape all determine how much light the orchard intercepts and how evenly that light is distributed through the leaves and fruit. Those two measures, light interception and light distribution, shape yield, fruit size, colour and quality.

HORTGRO

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n practical terms, orchard design is largely a question of how to manage light. In South Africa, though, that design challenge comes with a twist. Here, sunlight is not only a resource.

At times, it is also a threat.

Decades of international research have converged on a handful of principles for modern orchard systems. A productive orchard should intercept a high proportion of the available light, distribute that light well throughout the canopy, come into high yields early in its life, carry a simple canopy that lends itself to at least partial mechanisation, and be planted at high density.

The numbers behind these principles are well established.

Mature systems that intercept at least 70% of available light consistently out-yield those that capture less. Early work on apples found that a part of the canopy needs to receive a meaningful share of incident light, of the order of 30%, for fruit to colour properly and for next season’s flower buds to form.

Both goals are undermined by shade within the tree, where vigorous upper branches starve the lower canopy of light, leaving it unproductive and its fruit poorly coloured.

From big trees to fruiting walls The practical response to these principles has been a steady move away from large, vigorous, widely spaced trees toward high-density plantings of small trees on dwarfing rootstocks, trained as narrow canopies. A range of training systems has grown up to serve this aim. The central-leader and tall-spindle systems build a slender, conical tree on a permanent support.

The increasingly popular two-dimensional or planar systems, often described as fruiting walls or planar cordons, flatten the canopy into a thin, wall-like plane only a metre or two deep. Older espalier, vertical-axis and upright-fruiting-offshoot approaches share the same logic.

The reason for thinning the canopy is consistent across all of them: a narrow wall of foliage has little internal shade, so light reaches almost every leaf and fruit, the trees come into bearing early, and the simple, predictable shape is far easier to prune, thin, harvest and, increasingly, to mechanise.

22 VEGETABLES & FRUIT | JULY • AUGUST 2026

These systems do not come for free. Trees on precocious dwarfing rootstocks cannot stand alone and crop heavily from a young age, so a permanent trellis or support structure has to be installed early in the orchard’s life. Spacing has to balance the height of the canopy against the width of the alley between rows, since a tall canopy over a narrow alley will shade its neighbour, and the equipment that tends and harvests the orchard has to fit between the rows.

The heavy establishment cost of trees, support and irrigation is justified only if the planting crops early and well, which is exactly why early, high yields are built into the list of design principles rather than treated as a happy bonus.

The orchard of the future South Africa’s pome fruit industry has pursued these ideas through Hortgro Science’s Orchard of the Future programme, which has helped set the research agenda for crop production.

As Prof Wiehann Steyn has put it, current crop-production research can largely be justified to producers by where it fits into this vision of the future orchard and the risks it is designed to manage.

For design, the lasting point is that this model is less forgiving than the orchards it replaced, and rewards producers who plan the whole orchard rather than the tree alone.

South African conditions, though, depart from the textbook. Many of the orchard systems that shaped modern thinking were developed in places such as northern Europe and upstate New York, where direct radiation and evaporative demand are relatively low.

In those conditions, the sensible goal is to capture as much light as possible. Researchers Corelli-Grappadelli and Lakso questioned whether maximising light interception is always the best choice.

They pointed out that thin, fully exposed canopies that work well under modest northern light may behave very differently under fierce sun. In South Africa, light is rarely scarce and is often present in damaging excess.

The clearest sign of that risk is sunburn. Hortgro Science has described it as the biggest single cause of fruit being culled in South Africa’s apple industry. In bad seasons, it can wipe out a sizeable share of the crop. That changes the design brief:

SAGTEVRUGTE

the goal becomes enough light for yield and colour, without exposing the fruit to damaging excess.

Designing with shade This is why protective netting has become part of orchard design in South Africa rather than an afterthought. Drape nets, fixed nets, and even single-tree sock nets over sun-sensitive Granny Smith pollinisers are used to cut the radiation reaching the fruit. They bring a cluster of benefits beyond sunburn control: protection against hail and wind, and a softer canopy microclimate with lower fruit and leaf temperatures. Under the right configuration, also modest savings in water use, with controlled studies on fixed white netting recording small but real reductions and some growers reporting larger figures.

Netting is not without complications. It adds cost, and it changes how the orchard must be sprayed, since the softer, less ultraviolet-intense environment under nets can raise disease pressure such as powdery mildew, and spray and bait penetration through the netting has to be managed, points that Hortgro’s crop-protection researchers have been careful to flag.

The interplay of light and shade is at its most delicate with Granny Smith, where the goal is a uniformly dark green, unblemished fruit. Research has shown that the fruit needs an open canopy and good light exposure during the first half of its development, so that it can build up as much chlorophyll as possible, but benefits from shading during the second half, which slows the breakdown of that chlorophyll and guards against both sunburn and unwanted red blush.

Keeping a green apple green therefore means giving it plenty of light early and shade later, a balancing act that draped and fixed netting can help to manage.

Distributing the light Capturing light at the orchard scale is only half the task; the light then has to reach the leaves and fruit deep in the canopy, and this is where training and pruning earn their keep.

A canopy left to its own devices builds a dense, vigorous top that shades everything beneath it, so the lower fruit co­ lours poorly and the lower wood gradually goes unproductive.

Modern training systems counter this by keeping the canopy narrow and by managing the balance between the top and bottom of the tree, often by holding the upper branches shorter than the lower ones so that light can spill down the wall of foliage.

Row orientation plays a part too. Rows running roughly north to south allow the sun to track across both faces of the canopy through the day, sharing the light more evenly than an east-to-west planting in which one side is favoured and the other left in shade.

The simple, narrow canopies that distribute light well happen also to be the canopies best suited to mechanisation, and this is no coincidence. A two-dimensional fruiting wall presents

its fruit on a predictable plane at a workable height, which suits platforms that move workers along the row, mechanical aids for pruning and thinning, and, in time, the sensing and robotic systems being developed internationally.

For a local industry under pressure from rising costs, the labour efficiency of a well-designed, accessible orchard is as much a part of the design rationale as the light it captures.

Although much of the research and the most striking examples come from apple, the same architecture is reshaping pears and stone fruit. Pears, long grown as large trees, are moving toward higher densities as suitable rootstocks and training systems are worked out, and planar systems are being applied to plums, peaches, nectarines and cherries, where good light distribution is just as decisive for fruit size, colour and sugar. The crop changes, but the core problem stays the same: capturing and spreading light while protecting the fruit.

Not all nets do the same job, either. Beyond a simple shade factor, the colour and type of net change the quality of the light reaching the canopy. Photoselective nets are being studied for their effects on growth, colour and fruit quality as well as on temperature and water use. The choice of whether and how to net is therefore becoming a horticultural decision about the light environment, not just a defence against hail and sun, and local research is still building the South African evidence base for it.

Putting it together A well-designed South African orchard is less a single decision than a set of choices that have to work together.

The rootstock sets the vigour and planting density. The density and training system determine the canopy shape and how much light it intercepts and distributes. The support structure makes the high-density, early-cropping system possible. The protection strategy, increasingly some form of netting, helps manage excess sun as well as hail and wind.

Water runs through all of these decisions. Hortgro researchers identify it as one of the most significant constraints on local production, influencing everything from rootstock choice to the decision to use nets.

The result is a more precise and site-specific approach to orchard design. Trials continue to test how canopy structure, light interception and protection strategies perform under South African conditions. The aim is straightforward: build orchards that crop early, work efficiently and produce high-quality fruit without leaving that fruit exposed to punishing sun.

Sources consulted: Hortgro Science Orchard of the Future programme and Fresh Quarterly articles (research reported by Anna Mouton, with input from Prof Wiehann Steyn, Hugh Campbell and Matthew Addison); NC State Extension and Cornell guidance on high-density orchard light interception; Corelli-Grappadelli and Lakso, “Is maximising orchard light interception always the best choice?” (Acta Horticulturae); Water Research Commission and South African Apple and Pear Producers’ Association netting and water-use studies.

VEGETABLES & FRUIT | JULIE • AUGUSTUS 2026

23

CROP PROTECTION

Geïntegreerde benadering saam met BASF beskerm jou oes Die aartappelbedryf is een van die hoekstene van landbou in Suid-Afrika. Saam met mielies en koring verteenwoordig aartappels een van die drie belangrikste bronne van koolhidrate in die dieet van Suid-Afrikaners.

Rita van der Merwe GEWASBESTUURDER: SPESIALITEITSGEWASSE – BASF

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fotosintese, wat opbrengsverliese van 20-50% kan veroorsaak.

Dit lei verder tot afgradering van knolle. Met vinnige opname en doeltreffende verspreiding in die blare verseker Bellis® betroubare beskerming, selfs onder uitdagende toestande.

Acrobat® WG bied voorkomende en plaaslik sistemiese beheer van laatroes (Phytophthora infestans). Die produk het ’n langdurige werking en beskerm aartappelplante voordat die siekte gevestig raak. Dit word vinnig deur blare opgeneem wat ’n belangrike voordeel bied in reënerige toestande. Verder bly dit lank aktief, selfs wanneer siektedruk toeneem. ’n Produk wat die lewe vir produsente verder kan vergemaklik is Orvego® wat die unieke Initium®-tegnologie bevat. Dit bied doeltreffende en betroubare beheer van laatroes (Phyto­ph-­­ thora infestans) en spog met uitstekende reënvastheid selfs onder vogtige toestande.

artappels is besonder vatbaar vir ’n reeks plantsiektes.

Swamme, bakterieë en virusse kan vinnig versprei en ernstige verliese tot gevolg hê indien dit nie bestuur word nie. In natter jare neem siekterisiko toe, wat beide koste en opbrengsonsekerheid die hoogte in jaag. Dit verg sorgvuldige bestuur om hierdie bedreigings te beheer.

Siektes en ander plae kan opbrengs in die laaste pylvak van produksie lelik benadeel en die tradisionele manier van plaagbeheer is nie meer voldoende nie. Tydens die Innovasie-simposium van Aartappels SA by die WNNR in Pretoria in 2025 het kundiges ooreengestem dat geïntegreerde plaagbestuur die sleutel is vir volhoubare aartappelproduksie. ‘n Geïntegreerde benadering ondersteun nie net klimaatsuitdagings nie, maar laat ‘n kleiner omgewingsvoetspoor en maak ook ekonomies sin omdat ‘n goed-beplande beheerprogram kostes in toom kan hou.

Die sleutel tot suksesvolle plaagbeheer is voorkomende optrede en daarom is noukeurige gewasmonitering noodsaaklik.

Akkurate voorspellingsmodelle en beheerprogramme kan die verskil tussen beheer en verlies beteken. Om by hierdie benadering aan te sluit en so opbrengs en kwaliteit te beskerm, bied BASF ’n reeks betroubare hulpmiddels wat deel van ‘n produsent se geïntegreerde plaagbestuurstrategie (IPM) kan vorm.

Suksesvolle aartappelproduksie gaan egter oor meer as net siektebestuur. ’n Land vry van onkruid vorm die grondslag van gesonde gewasse. ’n Doeltreffende onkruidbeheerprogram is belangrik in die strewe na hoër opbrengs en kwaliteit knolle. Twee van BASF se betroubare oplossings staan in hierdie opsig ver uit bo die res: Frontier® Optima is ’n vooropkoms-onkruiddoder wat grasse, geeluintjies en sekere breëblaaronkruide effektief beheer. Focus® Ultra is ’n selektiewe na-opkoms-oplossing vir die doelgerigte beheer van problematiese grasonkruide.

Doeltreffende siektebeheer

Insekbeheer speel ‘n groot rol

Van die algemene siektes wat kopsere kan veroorsaak, sluit laatroes, vroeëroes, Alternaria-vlek, swartskurf, bruinskurf, sagtevrot en bolvrot in. BASF bied gespesialiseerde oplossings vir die doeltreffende beheer van ekonomies belangrike aartappelsiektes.

As ‘n nuwe toevoeging tot ons swamdoderportefeulje vir aartappels, bied Sercadis® betroubare beheer van Rhizoctonia solani, ’n knol- en grondgedraagde patogeen wat swartskurf veroorsaak. Koue, nat grondtoestande tesame met swak dreine­ ring skep ideale omstandighede vir dié patogeen.

Aangedryf deur Xemium®, ‘n innoverende SDHI-tegnolo­ gie, versprei Sercadis® effektief deur die plant om sodoende uitsteken­de beskerming te bied. Dit moet tydens plant in die plantvoor toegedien word vir die beskerming van jong plante, meer eenvormige opkoms en ’n sterker begin vir ’n hoë-opbrengs seisoen. Die produk is selektief en ideaal vir gebruik in geïntegreerde plaagbeheerstelsels.

Nog ’n staatmaker van BASF is Bellis®, ‘n waterdispergeer­ bare korrelswamdoder vir die voorkomende beheer van vroeë­ roes (Alternaria solani). Hierdie siekte beskadig blare en beperk

GEVAARSTELLINGS: Cantus® WG en Vivando®: Giftig vir waterlewe, met langdurige gevolge. Indien mediese hulp benodig of aangevra word, maak seker u het die houer en etiket byderhand. Gooi enige oorblywende inhoud en houer weg by ’n versamelpunt vir gevaarlike afval. • Collis®: Moontlikheid dat dit kanker kan veroorsaak. Giftig vir waterlewe, met langdurige gevolge. Dra beskermende handskoene/klere/oogbeskerming. Indien blootgestel is of bekommerd is, soek mediese hulp. • Kumulus® WG: Indien mediese hulp benodig word, hou produkhouer of -etiket byderhand. • Orvego®: Skadelik, indien dit ingesluk word. Uiters giftig vir waterlewe, met langdurige gevolge. Moenie eet, drink of rook wanneer hierdie produk gebruik word nie. Was blootgestelde/besmette liggaamsdele deeglik na gebruik. VERWYS ASSEBLIEF NA PRODUKETIKETTE VIR VOLLEDIGE GEBRUIKSAANWYSINGS EN BELANGRIKE STELLINGS RONDOM VEILIGE GEBRUIK.

24 VEGETABLES & FRUIT | JULY • AUGUST 2026

Onkruidbeheer bly belangrik

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Saam vorm hierdie oplossings ’n geïntegreerde plaagbeheerbenadering wat produsente help om risiko’s te bestuur, gewasse te beskerm en met vertroue na ’n hoëgehalte-oes te werk.

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Innoverende beskerming teen swamsiekte op wingerd

As ’n erkende en innoverende markleier, fokus BASF daarop om waarde op die langtermyn en volhoubare oplossings aan produsente, die bedryf en die gemeenskap te bied. Wanneer dit by die beheer van swamsiektes in wingerde kom, bied BASF talle bewese oplossings teen donsskimmel, witroes (poeieragtige meeldou) en botritis.

DONSSKIMMEL Orvego®: Initium® en dimetomorf vorm saam ’n kragtige kombinasie wat ’n dubbele slag in die beheer van donsskimmel op wingerd toedien. Die voordeel van Orvego® se kort onthoudingsperiodes stel jou in staat om dit vroeg in die program toe te dien, terwyl die produk se uitstekende oplosbaarheid dit soveel makliker maak om voor toediening te meng. Die chemiese klas waartoe Initium® behoort (FRAC Grp 45), maak Orvego® die ideale oplossing om weerstand te voorkom, sonder enige kruisweerstand. Verder maak die gunstige toksikologiese profiel van Orvego® teenoor die omgewing, dit vir gebruikers en verbruikers ’n ideale keuse vir geïntegreerde donsskimmelbeheer. Buitengewone reënvastheid binne een uur na toediening bied beskerming op die blare en trosse, selfs tydens nat toestande.

WITROES Collis® kombineer kresoxim-methyl en boscalid vir uitmuntende beheer teen witroes in ’n spuitprogram.

Omdat die twee aktiewe bestanddele verskillend op, en binne, die plantweefsel reageer dra dit by tot verbeterde sistemies voorkomende beheer van witroes.

Een van BASF se staatmakers, Kumulus® WG is ’n droëswael-swamdoder met goeie vermengingseienskappe. Die uiters betroubare formulasie met drie

Vivando® se enkele aktiewe bestanddeel bevat metrafenone wat vinnig deur die kutikula tot in die onderliggende selle beweeg, waar dit opbou en dan verder deur die blaarweefsel versprei. Vivando® is na toediening in ’n gasformaat rondom druiwetrosse teenwoordig, wat beskerming binne die tros bied. Dit is ook uiters reënvas en lewer goeie nawerking. Verder sorg die wye toedieningsvenster vir ’n wye keuse van posisionering in die witroesbeheerprogram, met geen kruisweerstand teenoor ander aktiewe bestanddele in die beheer van witroes nie.

BOTRITIS Cantus® WG is ’n water-oplosbare korrel met sistemiese werking wat beskerming bied teen beide botritis en witroes. Die enkele aktiewe bestanddeel, boscalid, in Cantus®, verhoed vroegtydige spoorontkieming en swamontwikkeling op en binne die plantweefsel. Dit word as enkelbespuiting voor trossluiting aanbeveel vir optimale beskerming teen botritis. Die betroubare formulasie verseker verder uitstekende reënvastheid na toediening. Daarom is geen hertoediening na reën of besproeiing nodig nie.

BASF Suid-Afrika (Edms) Bpk. • The Ingress, Tweede Vloer, Gebou 3, Hoek van Magwa- en Lone Creek-singel • Waterfall City 2090 • Posbus 2801, Halfweghuis, 1685 • Tel: +27 11 203 2400 • Faks: +27 11 203 2461 • Webwerf: www.agro.basf.co.za • Mobiele webwerf: m.agro.basf.co.za • E-pos: agcelence-za@basf.com Cantus® WG Reg. Nr. L7444. Wet Nr. 36 van 1947. Aktiewe bestanddeel: Boscalid 500 g/kg. • Collis® Reg. Nr. L7489. Wet Nr. 36 van 1947. Aktiewe bestanddele: Boscalid 200 g/ℓ. Kresoxim-methyl 100 g/ℓ. Waarskuwing. • Kumulus® WG Reg. Nr. L2404. Wet Nr. 36 van 1947. Aktiewe bestanddeel: Sulphur 800 g/kg. • Orvego® Reg. Nr. L9185. Wet Nr. 36 van 1947. Aktiewe bestanddele: Initium®, Ametoctradin 300 g/ℓ. Dimethomorph 225 g/ℓ. Waarskuwing. • Vivando® Reg. Nr. L8352. Wet Nr. 36 van 1947. Aktiewe bestanddeel: Metrafenone 500 g/ℓ.

Cantus® WG, Collis®, Initium®, Kumulus® WG, Orvego® en Vivando® is geregistreerde handelsmerke van BASF. Gevaarstellings: Cantus® WG en Vivando®: Giftig vir waterlewe, met langdurige gevolge. Indien mediese hulp benodig of aangevra word, maak seker u het die houer en etiket byderhand. Gooi enige oorblywende inhoud en houer weg by ’n versamelpunt vir gevaarlike afval. • Collis®: Moontlikheid dat dit kanker kan veroorsaak. Giftig vir waterlewe, met langdurige gevolge. Dra beskermende handskoene/klere/oogbeskerming. Indien blootgestel is of bekommerd is, soek mediese hulp. • Kumulus® WG: Indien mediese hulp benodig word, hou produkhouer of -etiket byderhand. • Orvego®: Skadelik, indien dit ingesluk word. Uiters giftig vir waterlewe, met langdurige gevolge. Moenie eet, drink of rook wanneer hierdie produk gebruik word nie. Was blootgestelde/besmette liggaamsdele deeglik na gebruik. VERWYS ASSEBLIEF NA PRODUKETIKETTE VIR VOLLEDIGE GEBRUIKSAANWYSINGS EN BELANGRIKE STELLINGS RONDOM VEILIGE GEBRUIK.

uppe marketing A42961

Aangesien dit ook die gewenste nawerking bied, is Collis® ’n betroubare keuse wat goed in ’n afwisselende spuitprogram teen witroes pas.

kenmerkende deeltjie-groottes wat optimum stabiliteit in suspensie bied, dra by tot doeltreffende klewing en nawerking in, en op, die blaar- en vrugoppervlak.

Hierdie eienskappe verseker vinnige werking, volgehoue vrystelling en langdurige beskerming om witroes effektief te beheer.

CROP PROTECTION

Integrated pest management and the rise of biological control Calendar spraying built around a single reliable chemical has given way, for most South African producers, to a more sophisticated system in which chemistry is one tool among many. Integrated pest management, or IPM, is that system, and biological control is increasingly at its centre.

I

PM is a way of making decisions, not a product. The producer monitors the crop, identifies pests and acts only when they approach levels that threaten economic damage. The least disruptive effective option is used first, with broad-spectrum che­ mi­cals held back for when softer tools are not enough. The aim is not to eliminate every pest, but to keep populations below damaging levels while preserving natural enemies, chemistry and market access.

IPM starts with knowing what is in the crop. Pheromone traps help producers track when key pests are active and how numerous they are. Pheromones can also be used for mating disruption, saturating the orchard air so males cannot find females and breeding collapses without insecticide. In apples and pears, mating disruption against codling moth grew directly from the need to manage insecticide resistance and has become a mainstay of protection.

The sterile insect technique fights a pest with its own reproduction. Large numbers of the target insect are reared, sterilised and released to mate with wild insects. Because these matings produce no offspring, sustained releases drive the wild population down.

From early work in Stellenbosch on Mediterranean fruit fly, the approach has grown into area-wide programmes against Mediterranean fruit fly, false codling moth and codling moth, with others under development. It is host-specific, environmentally benign and most effective when whole regions participate.

Biological control: enlisting natural enemies Biological control puts predators, parasites and pathogens to work. In augmentative biological control, natural enemies are reared and released to supplement those already present.

Predatory mites used against spider mites are a strong local example, as is the tiny egg parasitoid that attacks false codling moth. These agents target pests at vulnerable stages and help keep populations from building early, when intervention is cheapest and most effective.

Biopesticides sit between biological control and conventional spraying. Against false codling moth, for example, producers can use a granulovirus that infects and kills larvae while leaving no conventional chemical residue. Entomopathogenic nematodes and fungi such as Beauveria add to the microbial toolkit. Used within an IPM programme, these products help reduce infestation while protecting market access.

Every orchard already contains predators and parasites that suppress pests for free. Careless spraying can destroy this workforce and trigger secondary outbreaks, such as mite flare-

26 VEGETABLES & FRUIT | JULY • AUGUST 2026

ups after their predators are removed. Selective products, careful timing and threshold-based spraying help conserve these natural enemies. In a good IPM programme, chemistry is chosen not only for what it kills, but for what it spares.

This is why the sequence of decisions in integrated management matters as much as the tools themselves. Protecting natural enemies is, in effect, protecting the free pest control the system depends on.

Scouting and thresholds IPM is powerful, but it is not effortless. It requires knowledge, time and attention: the ability to identify pests and natural enemies, read traps and judge thresholds. It often works best when neighbours coordinate, because pests and released natu­ ral enemies do not respect farm boundaries. Biological tools may act more slowly than a chemical knock-down, so patience and planning matter.

Why IPM is now central The shift to integrated management is being driven by hard necessity as much as by principle. Market access now turns on residues, so a producer aiming at premium export markets cannot simply reach for the strongest available chemical. Resistance has blunted key insecticides, regulation has removed others, and consumers increasingly care about what is on the fruit they buy.

The settled industry view is that the days of relying on chemicals alone are over, and that a sustainable strategy must draw on a variety of methods. Far from being a soft alternative, a well-run IPM programme is a demanding, knowledgeintensive system that asks more of the producer than calendar spraying ever did.

For producers, the task is to build IPM deliberately: invest in monitoring, learn which natural enemies are present, protect them, adopt mating disruption, biopesticides and area-wide tools where they fit, and reserve chemical intervention for when it is genuinely needed. The reward is a crop protected in a way that satisfies regulators, markets and consumers while reducing dependence on any single chemical tool.

Sources consulted: Hortgro Science commentary on integrated pest management in deciduous fruit (Matthew Addison); Stellenbosch University and Rhodes University research on biological control of false codling moth, including parasitoids, entomopathogenic nematodes and fungi (Pia Addison, Antoinette Malan, Sean Moore and colleagues); reviews of South Africa’s sterile insect technique programmes for Mediterranean fruit fly, false codling moth and codling moth; research on viral biopesticides (granulovirus) against false codling moth.

CROP PROTECTION

Invasive and quarantine pests: the biosecurity front line Crop protection is usually pictured as a battle inside the orchard, but some of its most important work happens at borders and in early-warning networks. For an exporting industry, a new pest is a double threat: it can damage the crop and close markets. Biosecurity, the work of keeping damaging pests out and detecting them quickly when they arrive, is therefore not a side issue. It is a condition of staying in business.

A

quarantine pest is one that an importing country regulates against, requiring proof that consignments are free of it.

Its presence in a production area, or discovery in a shipment, can trigger rejection, extra treatment requirements or market closure. For a major fruit exporter, the cost of one quarantine pest in one carton can extend far beyond that consignment.

New and looming invaders The greater anxiety is the pest not yet established, or only recently arrived. Oriental fruit fly, a highly invasive relative of Mediterranean fruit fly, attacks hundreds of fruit and vegetable hosts and has spread widely through Africa. Fall armyworm, native to the Americas, swept into Africa within the past decade and became a major pest of maize and other crops. Both underline the need for surveillance, fast reporting and integrated control before a new pest becomes permanent.

No recent invasion shows the stakes more sharply than the polyphagous shot hole borer. This tiny ambrosia beetle arrived in South Africa just over a decade ago and has since spread to nearly every province. It carries and farms a fungus inside trees, blocking their vascular systems and killing susceptible hosts. Much of its spread has been driven by human movement of infested wood, putting prevention partly in the hands of anyone moving plant material.

Most invaders arrive through human activity: imported plants and plant products, untreated wood and packaging, travellers’ luggage and consignments of fresh produce. The same trade and travel that open markets for South African fruit also create pest pathways. Border controls are therefore the outer wall of the biosecurity system, but they cannot carry the burden alone.

This is also where the biosecurity story connects to the rest of crop protection. A virus such as the one threatening pepper and tomato crops elsewhere in this issue spreads on contaminated seed, tools and hands, while sap-feeding insects such as aphids, thrips and whiteflies move plant viruses from one crop to the next as they feed. Keeping these threats out, or containing them once present, depends on the same logic of clean material, hygiene and vigilance that governs the larger invaders, applied at the scale of a seed lot or a seedling tray.

The pest threat is not static, and a warming climate is reshaping it. Rising temperatures can allow a pest to complete more generations in a season, to survive winters that once killed it back, and to establish in areas previously too cool for it, widening the range of country at risk.

For South African producers, this means the list of pests they must watch for is likely to lengthen rather than shorten.

Area-wide thinking and shared responsibility Because pests ignore fences, the strongest responses are often area-wide. Sterile insect technique programmes, regional monitoring and coordinated control depend on broad participation; a single untreated property can weaken the efforts of its neighbours. Surveillance works the same way: a network of traps and trained observers can detect a new arrival far earlier than any farm acting alone.

The economic logic behind all this is stark. Almost every pest invasion is vastly cheaper to stop early, while the population is small and localised, than to manage once it is established and widespread, by which point eradication is usually impossible and the cost becomes permanent. This is why early detection is valued so highly, and why the unglamorous work of surveillance, inspection and reporting earns its place alongside the more visible tools of crop protection.

Where a quarantine pest cannot be excluded, market access rests on an integrated systems approach: field control, monitoring, orchard hygiene and careful management layered together so that the chance of a live pest reaching the market is negligible. South African producers have built field-toshipment programmes of exactly this kind, and the strength of that management keeps demanding export markets open.

How biosecurity works Biosecurity works as a chain. Border inspection regulates what enters. Surveillance seeks new pests while populations are still small. Movement controls slow spread between regions. Producers provide the last line of defence through hygiene, careful sourcing and quick reporting.

Biosecurity is a shared responsibility linking regulators, researchers, surveillance teams and producers into one defensive system.

Sources consulted: Forestry and Agricultural Biotechnology Institute (FABI), University of Pretoria, and the South African Journal of Science on the polyphagous shot hole borer (Euwallacea fornicatus) and its fungal symbiont; reviews of false codling moth, Mediterranean fruit fly and codling moth as quarantine and field pests; literature on the oriental fruit fly (Bactrocera dorsalis) and fall armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda) in Africa; DALRRD plant-health and quarantine guidance; Citrus Research International. Confirm current pest distribution, quarantine status and host lists against current sources before print.

VEGETABLES & FRUIT | JULIE • AUGUSTUS 2026

27

GENERAL

Residues and market access, living with the MRL For any producer who exports, or supplies a packer that does, the most important number attached to a spray is often the residue it may leave behind. Maximum residue limits, or MRLs, set the highest level of a pesticide permitted on a commodity when it reaches the consumer.

They protect health, support environmental safeguards and now shape fresh-produce production from the first spray decision. A consignment that exceeds the destination market’s limit can be rejected outright.

A

maximum residue limit (MRL) is a tolerance, expressed in parts per million, for a specific active ingredient on a specific commodity. It is not the point at which a residue becomes harmful; it is set far below that and reflects what should remain when a product is used correctly. Where no specific MRL exists, a default applies. In the European Union, that default is extremely low, meaning the fruit must effectively carry no detectable residue of that substance.

The export default and the strictest rule The complication for South African exporters is that markets set different limits for the same active on the same fruit. The industry’s answer is the export default MRL: the strictest relevant limit across destination markets, including South African, European Union and British requirements. Building a programme to that strictest limit protects flexibility if fruit is redirected, but it also means the most demanding market effectively sets the rule for the season.

The bridge between a spray in the orchard and a residue in the packhouse is the withholding period, or pre-harvest interval: the minimum time between the final application and harvest.

Longer intervals allow residues to decline below the limit. Because export programmes work to strict MRLs, export withholding periods are often longer than local-market ones and change as limits change. Harvesting too soon after a late spray is one of the easiest ways for an otherwise compliant crop to fail.

MRLs move. Importing markets, especially the European Union, periodically lower limits or remove them, often for health or environmental reasons. Individual countries may move even faster.

The producer’s responsibilities Responsibility rests with the producer and exporter. Export produce must be treated only with remedies registered under Act 36 of 1947, used only on the crops for which they are registered, and kept within the residue limits of the importing country. Full records of every spray and post-harvest treatment must be available on request. Exporters and producers therefore need to verify limits with importers or agents, track changes at home and abroad, and assume that an unlisted active should not be detectable.

Residue monitoring gives the system force. Samples are drawn during export inspections and analysed in laboratories

28 VEGETABLES & FRUIT | JULY • AUGUST 2026

capable of detecting minute traces. A residue above the destination market’s limit can stop, downgrade or divert a consignment, and repeated problems can damage the standing of a producer, exporter or industry. The testing is exacting because it is designed to prove that the fruit was grown to the rules.

This is also why the residue conversation reaches back to health and consumer confidence. Residue limits are set with a wide safety margin below any level of concern, so fruit grown within them is safe to eat, and the system’s real function is to keep residues both safe and as low as practicable while allowing effective pest control.

Meeting residue limits in practice rests on record-keeping and traceability. Producers are required to record every chemical applied to a crop, where, when and at what rate, both in the field and as any post-harvest treatment, and to make those records available on request. Modern fresh produce moves through traceability systems that can link a carton back to the orchard and its spray history, so that a residue problem can be traced to its source and corrected.

Layered on top of the legal requirements are the private standards and audits that many markets demand, which scrutinise spray programmes, record-keeping and storage as a condition of supply. Far from being mere paperwork, these records are what allow a producer to demonstrate that fruit was produced to the standard the market requires.

The science of residue decline The science behind withholding periods is simple: residues decline over time. The rate depends on the active ingredient, crop, dose and weather, with sunlight, rain, temperature and fruit growth all playing a part. Timing is therefore critical. The same product that leaves a compliant residue early in the programme can fail if applied too close to harvest. Planning the last possible application date for each product is one of the producer’s most important residue decisions.

A practical challenge for many producers is that the same crop may supply both the local market and several export markets with different residue rules, and the fruit is not always allocated to its destination until well into the season. Growing the whole crop to the strictest applicable standard is the simplest way to keep every option open, but it can mean forgoing useful products or accepting longer withholding periods than the local market would require.

ALGEMEEN

NWU research explores new approach to snakebite treatment Venomous snakebites affect thousands of people across Africa each year, but help can come too late if antivenom medication or expert assistance is unavailable. A team of researchers in the Faculty of Health Sciences at the North-West University (NWU) is investigating whether medicines already used to treat other conditions could help combat snakebite envenomation.

L

ed by Prof. Anél Petzer, the research focuses on identifying small molecule therapeutics (SMTs) capable of neutralising the toxic enzymes found in snake venoms. If successful, the approach could provide an alternative treatment option that is easier to store, transport and administer than conventional antivenoms.

It comes at a time when many countries continue to face shortages of antivenom medicines. Conventional antivenoms are expensive to produce, require refrigeration and must be administered intravenously in healthcare facilities. Researchers believe medicines already available on the market could help address some of these challenges while expanding access to treatment, particularly in rural communities.

“Venoms consist of many enzymes that are responsible for the toxic effects observed after envenomation,” says Prof.

Petzer. “If we can eliminate the activity of those enzymes, we can halt or slow the progression of the toxicity and thus provide a valuable alternative to conventional antivenom.”

SMTs are compounds commonly found in medicines such as aspirin and ibuprofen. According to Prof. Petzer, they work by binding to specific venom enzymes and preventing them from causing damage in the body.

The research team analyses the enzymes present in different snake venoms and uses computer modelling to identify medicines that may be able to inhibit them. Existing medicines are then tested to determine whether they can block venom activity.

Prof. Petzer says repurposing medicines already on the

market offers several advantages.

“The drug already has the appropriate safety profile and is already in an acceptable dosage form. Furthermore, it saves a lot of time, money and resources associated with novel drug design,” she says.

The team aims to address several challenges associated with current antivenom treatment. Oral medicines could potentially be distributed through clinics, pharmacies and emergency care services, while tablets and capsules can often be stored at room temperature. Oral preparations are generally more affordable than antivenoms.

The project has already produced several milestones. Researchers have analysed venoms from the green and black mamba, rinkhals, Cape cobra, Mozambique spitting cobra, puff adder, Gaboon adder and rhombic night adder. The team has also established laboratory assays for key venom enzymes and identified hundreds of potential drug candidates through database screening and molecular modelling.

“We have identified more than 500 drugs and categorised them according to availability, cost and route of administration to align with World Health Organisation recommendations and goals,” Prof. Petzer says.

The next phase of the project will involve testing the most promising candidates in animal models before progressing to preclinical studies and clinical trials. If successful, the research could help expand access to snakebite treatment in communities where antivenom medications remain difficult to obtain.

Residues and market access, living with the MRL FROM PAGE 28 Some operations manage this by designating particular blocks for particular markets from the outset, applying the most demanding programme only where export fruit will come from, while others apply the strictest standard across the board for the sake of flexibility and simplicity.

This is where close communication with the exporter or marketing agent earns its keep. The producer who knows, before the season, which markets the fruit is likely to serve can build a programme that protects access to all of them.

Residue limits now sit at the centre of crop-protection plan-

ning. Product choice, timing and cut-off dates must be set with the destination market’s MRL in mind, not checked after the fact. An active that controls a pest well but leaves a residue above a key market’s limit is of little value to an exporter.

Sources consulted: Hortgro market-access guidance on export default MRLs and withholding periods, and its assessment of recent European and French MRL changes; DALRRD Directorate of Food Safety and Quality Assurance guidance on MRLs and exporter responsibilities; Citrus Growers’ Association MRL and pre-harvest-interval guidance; Codex Alimentarius.

VEGETABLES & FRUIT | JULIE • AUGUSTUS 2026

29

GENERAL

Making every drop count during water shortages Water shortages continue to challenge deciduous fruit producers, making efficient irrigation one of the most important management practices in the orchard. While drought conditions place enormous pressure on growers, careful planning and strategic irrigation can help reduce water use without significantly affecting production.

HORTGRO

A

ccording to guidance published by Hortgro Science, the greatest water savings can be achieved by understanding when fruit trees are least sensitive to water stress and by adapting irrigation practices throughout the season.

Timing is everything One of the key recommendations is to conserve water during the early stages of fruit development, when trees are generally less sensitive to water stress.

For pome fruit, this period extends from budding until about 40 days after full bloom, while for stone fruit it lasts from budding until the end of stone hardening. During these growth stages, carefully managed water deficits generally have little impact on final fruit size.

Applying mild water stress during the early season can also help reduce excessive vegetative growth. This not only lowers water use later in the season but can also improve light penetration into the canopy, benefiting bud development for the following crop.

Another opportunity for saving water comes after harvest.

Research has shown that carefully managed post-harvest irrigation can reduce water use while allowing trees to replenish reserves, provided excessive stress is avoided, particularly in stone fruit where bud initiation is still taking place.

Prioritise available water When irrigation water is limited, every orchard should not necessarily receive the same treatment.

Hortgro Science recommends prioritising orchards according to profitability, crop type, soil characteristics and expected returns. Orchards producing fruit where market value depends heavily on fruit size, such as pears, plums and cherries, generally require greater irrigation than apples.

Growers are also encouraged to evaluate older, less productive orchards and reconsider new developments when water resources are severely constrained.

Understand the soil Soil type plays a major role in irrigation management.

Heavier soils with greater clay and silt content generally retain water for longer, allowing wider irrigation intervals. Sandy or rocky soils require more frequent irrigation because of their

30 VEGETABLES & FRUIT | JULY • AUGUST 2026

lower water-holding capacity.

Monitoring soil moisture remains essential. Soil moisture probes, profile holes and regular field observations help determine how deeply irrigation water is penetrating and whether trees are using moisture efficiently.

Developing deeper root systems through appropriate irrigation management can also improve orchard resilience during future drought periods.

Practical water-saving strategies A combination of management practices can substan­ tially reduce water use without compromising orchard performance. These include: • controlling weeds to minimise unnecessary water use, • applying mulch to reduce surface evaporation, • avoiding excessive nitrogen applications that stimu­ late vigorous growth, • maintaining irrigation systems to ensure uniform water distribution, • irrigating at night where practical to minimise evap­ oration losses, • using accurate soil moisture monitoring equipment and weather data to guide irrigation scheduling, • carrying out timely summer pruning to reduce un­ necessary leaf area, and • managing crop load through early thinning to ba­ lance fruit size with available water.

The guidelines also recommend keeping detailed irrigation records and developing water budgets to ensure available water is allocated as efficiently as possible throughout the season.

Long-term resilience Beyond managing a single dry season, efficient irrigation practices can strengthen orchard resilience over the long term. Developing healthy root systems, improving irrigation efficiency and making informed management decisions all contribute to better water use and more sustainable production.

As climate variability continues to affect fruit production, irrigation management is becoming increasingly important. By combining careful planning with regular monitoring and efficient irrigation practices, growers can maximise every available drop of water while protecting orchard productivity.

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