The opportunity to improve pineapple production despite reducing fertiliser applications and the time spent on his spraying boom has prompted Maryborough grower Phill Smith to trial controlled release nutrition this season.
Phill and his wife, Kay, grow pineapples over about 16 hectares of their 40ha property, with fruit heading to the fresh market or to Golden Circle for processing.
They grow 7350 hybrid and clone (smooth leaf) varieties, and achieve two crops from the one planting over a three-and-a-half-year period.
Soil testing is undertaken, with any deficiencies corrected; shooting pineapple tops are dipped in a rooting hormone and phos acid mix to protect the roots prior to planting; and the Smiths previously used the Incitec Pivot 77S fertiliser, containing sulphate of potash, as a pre-plant application and again six months later.
Further fertiliser applications, particularly during the good growing season from October to April, could be carried out once a month prior to rainfall events and up until applying ethylene gas about 12 months after planting to induce fruit production.
In more recent times, the Smiths have followed the pre-plant fertiliser with two applications spaced six weeks apart and each comprising 50 kilograms/ha of nitrogen, 50kg/ha of potassium and 10kg/ha of magnesium.
Leaf analysis is used to adjust some fertiliser applications and Phill said he irrigated crops about four weeks before picking to give them a boost.
He is co-ordinating the controlled release nutrition trial on their property with Barmac area sales manager Wayne Muller, using the company’s Ferticote blend.
Barmac’s Ferticote products use Haifa’s Multicote controlled release technology to ensure growers receive the highest quality ingredients in the blends.
The Multicote technology incorporates unique polymer coating that allows a slow, continuous release of dissolved nutrients to the root zone at a soil media temperature of 21 degrees.
Wayne said Ferticote already was being used by some growers in the Yeppoon area.
“The flowers set up the fruit size, so they want to get bigger plants and flowers, to then pick bigger fruit,” he said.
The trial on the Smiths’ property features their traditional fertiliser applications spaced six weeks apart after the pre-plant application; pineapple tops dipped in phos acid and grown on the Incitec Pivot 77S fertiliser; similar plants
grown on the Ferticote blend applied at an equivalent of 580kg/ha; and a similar application with plants dipped in the phos acid and rooting hormone mix.
The Ferticote blend is an eight-month controlled release fertiliser and plants in these plots have received an application of 25kg/ha of nitrogen, 25kg/ha of potassium and 5kg/ha of magnesium.
Source: The Weekly Times