A Sunraysia industry may well be on the verge of a bold new era, and Dried Fruits Australia chief executive Thomas Cheung says the clock is ticking to see just how well it goes.
The January unveiling of the commercial licensing of the CSIRO-bred Murray Bold was an industry showcase when about 60 dried grape growers attended a DFA field walk in Merbein South to see first hand the results of the variety’s trial licence plantings before cutting and harvest.
And to hear about the potential of the new vine.
Mr Cheung said this year they planned to see as many as 8000 vines go into the ground in August/September.
But points out this is only a small stage of Murray Bold’s rollout, with fairly rapid expansion expected.
“You have to accept new varieties are in trials for a few years before the industry can get an accurate assessment of how they will truly perform in a range of soil and climatic settings, which is why we have extended this first trial beyond Victoria and into NSW and South Australia,” he said.
“Don’t forget, we have only had Murray Bold’s proper commercial licence since January, but we are pretty confident there are three core areas we will be watching as the vines start to grow and fruit.”
They are:
- How promising is this variety with its expected high yield?
- Its true tolerance to water.
- Earlier harvest variety compared to typical saltanas
Mr Cheung said experience has taught him, and the wider industry, to be conservative in their approach and the way a new variety might be talked up.
For example, some estimates suggest Murray Bold may go somewhere between 10-15 tonnes per hectare in ideal circumstances.
Mr Cheung said they have all been there before, and while they were right about all the boxes they ticked with another new variety – there was one little thing which had been overlooked.
“When the industry started to take up SunMuscat it seemed it would be perfect for the snacking market,” he said.
“It also seemed to be an excellent new option, it promised a lot, including better returns for growers when compared with Sultana, and very quickly a lot of people started to replace the traditional vine with the new one, to the point SunMuscat is now the most widely grown variety in the country.
“And yes, it really did tick every performance box – the only thing we had not counted on was it is a later maturing variety, and in dried fruits that makes a really big difference – it seriously narrows the window for harvest and means we run a greater risk of water damage.”
It is hoped Murray Bold, Mr Cheung said, would give as many as three, even four weeks, back for harvest.
SunMuscat harvests around the end of February into early March. Sultana does mid to the end of February. Murray Bold is expected to be ready to go from early February.
Mr Cheung said even one week earlier would be a significant gain for growers and it increased the buffer before autumn rains and better suited string demand in the Asian/Pacific markets “which love SunMuscat as a snack, especially to mix with nuts”.
“If you already have a tighter harvest window, and you get hit by rain, you have nowhere to go,” he said.
“But if you can harvest in summer, you get the benefit of the warmer weather, fruit dries quicker and is easier to harvest – after that the temperatures start to drop and the moisture levels start to rise, and that makes it hard.”
“While Murray Bold is being billed as a new variety, I am tending to look at it as a SunMuscat Mark II – there have been no real plantings of Sultana in recent years, but SunMuscat is still growing, and if Murray Bold is everything it promises, which would even mean more production for the same inputs, then it will be a serious plus for growers and marketers.”
New varieties are not uncommon in the table grape industry, but Mr Cheung is still adding ‘potential’ in front of game changer when people start talking about the vine.
“Even when we have more plantings we will still be commercially assessing Murray Bold.”
However, Mr Cheung said working with the CSIRO – which holds the licence – was proving to be a real bonus for the business.
He said the CSIRO put a lot of time, money and effort into this type of research and had been working closely with Dried Fruits Australia for many years.
“The licensing agreement we now have with them is incredibly generous, and you have to respect and admire CSIRO not just for the work it does but also for its understanding and acceptance of the cost of doing business as a grower,” Mr Cheung said.
“The fee for growers is $20 a tonne based on crop intake volume on dried frutis, and that’s a really good deal for us – some commercial developers can often charge four or five times as much, and in many of those varieties you don’t even own the vines, you are just renting them.
“But under the deal we have with CSIRO you only pay on what you harvest, if you have a bad year for any reason you don’t pay for anything you haven’t actually grown, and that is something special.”
Now the industry will wait and watch to see if it really does have something special.
To find out more about commercialisation arrangements for Murray Bold, contact Dried Fruits Australia by emailing admin@driedfruitsaustralia.org.au
