Seeka Kerikeri Trial
T&G (now Seeka) purchased a PollenSmart and conducted their own thorough trials in 2017. Due to commercial sensitivity, T&G have not released their full data but have given us the following data sheet of their first trial with the PollenSmart.
T&G told us they have had already done extensive trials on pollination methods in the past and the PollenSmart gave excellent results. They see good pollination as critical to a good crop and OGR and now use PollenSmart for their pollination.
The first trial was at 400g per ha but after seeing the results they planned to do more trials in line with 150 to 200 grams per ha.
T&G Results
2017
Methodology
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The trial was conducted in a block with no male flowers
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Bees were present during flowering at a rate of 10 hives/ha
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20 canes were identified and tagged prior to flowering
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During flowering 6 flower buds of the same age (popcorn stage) on each of the 20 canes were identified and randomly allocated to one of 6 treatments using coloured wool
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The treatments evaluated were; hand pollination (optimal pollination), 1,2,3,4 or 5 applications of pollen using the PollenSmart
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Pollen was applied at a rate of 400g/ha
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Once the flowers had been exposed to their allocated number of pollen applications, the fruit was bagged so that the flowers would not be exposed to any further pollen.
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The bags were applied late in the day of the final pollen application to allow for a full day(s) of bee activity
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The bags remained on the fruit until after fruit set at which time they were removed.
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At harvest each of the canes were harvested separately and weighted with average weight determined for each of the treatments
T&G Kerikeri
"PollenSmart is user friendly and efficient.
The best pollinator we have used"
2 applications increased the fresh weight by 33% over 1 application.
5 applications gave an equivalent result to hand pollination
