Hi everyone,
I received the other day the program for the IFTA meeting in Grand Rapids, MI. This meeting has several general topic speakers and several peach-specific speakers that should be of interest to growers. There will also be an orchard tour stop on Tuesday focused on peaches. The current education director is trying to increase the presence of peach topics and info within IFTA as well as to expand geographic representation so that we might actually hold a future conference in the South. I believe that our industry will benefit of attending this year so it can build the momentum to keep adding peach topics.
One of the key points for peach production is that as we start exploring high density plantings and the benefits of vigor-controlling rootstocks, it may be important to look at other industries that are advanced in these concepts such as apple and cherry production. There is also a lot of just conceptual information that growers can learn from even if a speaker is talking about a different crop than peaches. Now it is a critical time as we have some peach rootstocks with vigor control as well as some new training techniques that can rapidly move peaches into the benefits of high density orchards.
