Moving South Africa's apple industry forward

Cape Sweet Nursery is revolutionising the production of apple plant material on dwarfing rootstocks. Farmer Retief du Toit and ZZ2 production manager Hendrik Pohl spoke to Glenneis Kriel about their work.

- Glenneis Kriel

When Retief du Toit joined the family farm, Bokveldskloof, in the Koue Bokkeveld in 1992, he and his father, Pierre, decided to start an apple nursery as a sideline business. Unfortunately, this venture never really took off, as there were too many other responsibilities that needed more urgent attention.

Du Toit went on to become one of ZZ2's farming partners, and in 2013, he and other growers in Ceres visited Italy to see how farmers there were producing apples. What they learnt was that the South African apple industry needed a serious overhaul in order to remain competitive.

"South African growers might be leaders in nutrition and disease and water management, but back then we were lagging when it came to the planting of trees at higher densities," he recalls.

"While some of our growers were pushing the boundary with spaces of up to 1,2m between plants, the Europeans were going as narrow as 0,8m."

ROOTSTOCK SHORTAGE

South African farmers' attempts to determine whether these narrower planting spaces would work under production conditions here were held back by a shortage of suitable rootstocks. Du Toit, for one, could only get enough M9 dwarfing rootstocks to plant 0,5ha of trees in 2014.

He explains that dwarfing rootstocks were not readily available in South Africa at the time, as most farmers thought they were unsuited to the country's climatic conditions. However, demand skyrocketed when this notion was dispelled once growers started seeing and experiencing the positive spin-offs of ultra-high-density plantings.

"Dwarfing rootstocks result in less vegetative growth, enabling the trees to be planted closer together than those on vigorous rootstocks. The latter also requires intensive annual pruning, manipulation, and fruit thinning to improve light penetration, whereas trees on dwarfing rootstocks need only slight tweaks once a year."