Visitors to Fruit Focus 2025 will be among the first to see the most up-to-date research and innovations from Niab. The specialist one-day event will bring together more than 1,500 visitors and over 100 exhibitors from the fresh fruit sector and wine making/viticulture at Niab's East Malling site in Kent on 9 July.
There will be plenty of opportunities for networking and exchanging knowledge with a key feature of the event being the popular Niab Research Tours, which include visits to the Produce Quality Centre, Research Vineyard and Plum Research Orchard.
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"All of the information presented at each of the tours will be new to this year's event," says Scott Raffle, knowledge exchange manager at Niab. "In the case of the Research Vineyard and Plum Research tours, visitors have had the opportunity to visit these in previous years, but we will be presenting information from research projects that are either new or results that have not been presented before."
The Niab/Growing Kent and Medway Fruit Research tour will share data about new projects not previously covered at Fruit Focus and will highlight the important work being done.
"This includes results on projects to control earwigs in strawberries, to better understand the invasive pest - the brown marmorated stink bug, and a project to develop non-invasive disease detection in cherry as well as methods to treat strawberries to improve their shelf-life. We will also present the latest information on coir recycling from used strawberry and raspberry crops," adds Mr Raffle.
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Other topics covered will include the Precision Orchard Management for the Environment (POME) project, which is developing methods of improving control of pests and diseases in apple while the Flythrive project is investigating the use of hoverflies for aphid control in strawberries.
Strawberry vertical farming will also be showcased for the first time to explain the work Niab is doing to maximise yield potentials.
And in the Research Hour at the NFU Forum, there will be an opportunity to discuss and debate key issues, challenges and developments within the fruit industry.
"The talk about raspberry propagation will provide some interesting results about how arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi have enhanced the performance of raspberry canes," says Mr Raffle.
"The soft fruit genetic improvement talk will explain how Niab, ADAS and The James Hutton Institute scientists are developing new breeding tools that can be used by commercial breeding programmes. While the POME project will highlight how modern technology is being adopted to help growers to better manage their orchards for the environment."
For more information:
NIAB
www.niab.com
