AGRICULTURAL NEWS - Dwarf avocado trees offer the benefits of a compact orchard and savings in labour and production costs. Lindi Botha spoke to farm manager Simon Dunshea in Mpumalanga.
With rising input costs and increasingly limited resources, many fruit producers are constantly looking for ways to increase yield in their orchards.
Simon Dunshea, the farm manager of Twycross farm in Schagen, Mpumalanga, had this in mind when the first dwarf variety of avocados were planted on the farm.
“My ultimate goal is to have a high-production orchard, with smaller trees planted at a higher density and giving higher tonnage per hectare,” he says.
Dunshea cultivates 125ha of avocados on the family farm, of which 50ha are planted to Hass, 15ha to the dwarf Gem variety, and 60ha to green-skin varieties such as Fuerte and Pinkerton.
But Twycross will eventually replace all of the green-skin varieties with Gem due to the benefits of dwarf trees.
