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.
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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
