PEOPLE AND COMMUNITY
At T&G Fresh: Ben Smith (general manager growing), Nilesh Patel (grower manager – covered crops) and Andrew Hutchinson (head grower – covered crops)
COMMERCIALISING BIOLOGICALS IN LARGE-SCALE GREENHOUSES T&G Fresh, the country’s largest greenhouse tomato grower, has achieved successful results using biological controls for whitefly in a trial with the A Lighter Touch (ALT) programme and TomatoesNZ. We asked Ben Smith, general manager growing at T&G Fresh, how the trial will change the covered crops division’s approach to Integrated Pest Management (IPM). Why did T&G Fresh agree to be part of the ALT/ TomatoesNZ trial into beneficial insects? Whitefly has been the Achilles heel for the tomato industry for many years, with the gap between Aotearoa New Zealand and best in class IPM driven by a lack of beneficial insects and an obsolete range of available insecticides. Whist being one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s key produce items, tomatoes are still a minor crop, and therefore the sector struggles to attract the investment that major crops like kiwifruit, grapes and apples have been able to achieve for better IPM programmes and insecticides. We knew this lack of R&D was hurting Kiwi growers and consumers in ways that most people had probably never considered, with the secondary effects and costs probably being far greater than 14
NZGROWER & ORCHARDIST : JULY 2025
the direct effects of whitefly piercing and sucking the sap from the leaf. We could see that moving the dial on whitefly control was fundamental to long-term commercial and environmental sustainability of the industry. T&G Fresh has always been committed to sustainable and innovative agricultural practices. We joined the ALT programme to explore effective biological control methods for managing whitefly and tomato potato psyllid in our tomato glasshouses. Over the past five years, our internal research, inspired by TomatoesNZ’s (plus their partners like the Bio-Protection Research Centre at Lincoln University) findings, indicated that Engytatus could significantly improve pest management in our glasshouses. This ALT trial provided an opportunity to validate these findings and enhance the production and quality of our tomatoes.