Healthy soil is the lifeblood of Australian vegetable producers, and most growers are keen to manage their soils in an environmentally and economically sustainable way.

Australian vegetable growers are major electricity users, with electricity costing the average farm over $50,000 annually. This project provides accurate estimates of costs and returns for generating electricity on farm.

Fruit flies are considered the world’s most serious group of horticultural pests. The withdrawal of insecticides dimethoate and fenthion has made it increasingly challenging for growers to prevent infestation of fruiting vegetable crops and meet stringent market access requirements.

Insect contamination in fresh and processed produce is a significant recurring problem for leafy vegetable growers and processors—with rejections leading to lost sales for growers, cost for processors and bad publicity for retailers.This project looks at better ways of reducing insect contamination in the field and in the factory ...

When the vegetable industry commissioned a series of studies on consumer vegetable choices in 2013, broccoli was a popular purchase—perceived as a healthy, tasty vegetable. However, inconsistency in retail quality and shelf life kept purchases down.This project is investigating the retail quality of broccoli and will propose ways to improve it if particular issues are uncovered.

Postharvest handling—the link between production and consumption —hasn’t received much attention. Yet postharvest strategies can improve quality and shelf life, and reduce costs, giving a better product for consumers and greater profits for growers. Existing recommendations describe what happens under optimum conditions, but what happens when conditions are less than ideal?

This project aimed at developing and testing low cost growing structures that will enable the production of high quality vegetables at minimum cost in the Central Philippines.These structures could prove useful in Australia—helping produce better quality vegetables with minimal cost.

This trial is a great example of the importance of antioxidants for plant health. For healthy fruit, severe stress of any sort should be avoided to ensure the antioxidant system is not stretched beyond its limit. If it is, visual damage will occur, resulting in a loss of product quality.

Using integrated pest management and safe chemicals that boost the plant’s natural defence systems (rather than problematic synthetic fungicides) this study aimed to find new ways to control powdery mildew in cucumber and zucchini crops to prevent crop and income losses while minimising the number of chemical applications.

This innovate project between Metro Cash and Carry Vietnam, the Agricultural Science Institute of Northern Central Vietnam and Applied Horticultural Research in Australia is resulting in high quality, clean vegetables for consumers in Vietnam.

With the market moving to pre-packed lettuces, with its stringent requirements, this guide helps growers and processors around Australia to maximise quality and yield in their operations.

Climate variability and change will affect growers and the industry as it impacts rainfall, temperatures, extreme weather events, pollination, pests, growing seasons, incidence of frost and more. This review identified actions growers and the industry can take to safeguard against climate related threats for specific vegetable crops across Australia.