Born and bred on a Merbein block, Andrew Zrna went to great lengths – including a detour to obtain a Bachelor of Science in biology – to get off the land. Anything, he says, that would keep him from being a dried fruit grower.
And he’s not.
Instead, he runs Merbein Vine Nursery – albeit on part of a dried fruit block.
Turns out, back in the 1990s, there wasn’t a lot of demand for newly minted biologists, particularly in the Sunraysia.
“I’m on a second-generation block, I just never wanted to be a second-generation fruit grower. Just slightly more than I didn’t want to be a nurseryman,” Mr Zrna laughs.
“But in 1995 I opened the nursery while I waited for something to come up – and I’m still waiting.
“Turns out, with my degree, I was overqualified for just about everything around here I kept being told – except to run a nursery, for which, apparently, I was perfectly qualified.”
Today our reluctant nurseryman has a growing business – literally – producing rootstock vines for the grape industry and is licenced to grow varieties such as Sheehan, Sun World Sugra39 and a raft of CSIRO strains including Black Gem, Sunglo and now Murray Bold.
Mr Zrna’s nursery is the only one with Murray Bold, the hottest variety to come onto the market in recent years and he has been contracted to multiply it, which he says has seen him end up with around 8000 plants to go out to the trial sites selected by Dried Fruits Australia for commercial trials.
And if it proves what its breeders expect, he will soon be shipping them all over the place.
Right now rootstock from the 25-odd acres he uses of his 35-acre holding which is his nursery goes as far north as Queensland and as far south as the Yarra Valley.
He said he had often worked with researchers looking to multiply cuttings – for example they come to him with 10 and want 100 or more.
“We are still very old school here, our vines are all field grown and grafted instead of being bench grafted as is the most common practice around the country now, but the Sunraysia is a little quirky and I reckon it’s still about 50/50 in our corner of the world,” Mr Zrna said.
“But I believe it is about the product, field production is not as expensive and we get a much quicker and clearer picture of a rootstock result than you do using bench grafting.
“It also gives us and our clients more flexibility, especially for late orders. With bench grafting the window for orders ends in October and November but we can go out to February.”
Mr Zrna said Murray Bold appeared to tick all the boxes – especially its tolerance to rain, which he saw as a big tick.
However, even though it is also expected to be high yielding, slightly earlier maturing, and more disease resistant, he said it was still early days.
“We will really need to see how it goes for a few years to find out what it will really add to the industry,” Mr Zrna said.
“Sunmuscat is a big variety and that’s a late one. There’s a lot of good varieties that are late, but not so many early, so with Murray Bold, Sugra 39, Selma Pete … there are a lot of options now for growers.”
This ‘bold’ step forward got its official unveiling at a Dried Fruits Australia industry walk earlier this year attended by about 60 dried grape growers looking for more information about the variety and to see its trial plantings firsthand before cutting and harvesting.
The rain-resistant variety offers a substitute to widely used Sultana, maturing about the same time, but importantly without splitting.
To find out more about commercialisation arrangements for Murray Bold, you can contact Dried Fruits Australia by emailing admin@driedfruitsaustralia.org.au
