Wednesday 1 August 2012

July 27 - 30 Darwin

Our eldest son Shaun has recently moved to Darwin to play out the cricket season so I had a good reason to stop by Darwin on my way home. Another reason was to meet with Dr Cameron McConchie head of Plant Industries, Northern Territory Department of Resources with whom I have had quite a bit of communication over the last 12 months. Cameron is helping to re-invigorate the date palm R&D project in Alice Springs at the Arid Zone Research Institute. This photo: Cameron McConchie, Mark Hoult and I
Cameron and I have been sharing information and this meeting was very productive in allowing us to discuss further, a cooperative way to help advance date production. We will be sharing some research projects including pollination trials and excanging date palm genetics to broaden the range of varieties both in the NT and Gurra Downs collections. I look forward to working with Cameron and staff into the future. This photo: Passionfruit selection trials
I also had the opportunity to tour through some of the projects the Plant Industries people are working on at their Berrimah facility - which includes selection work on passionfruit, mango and paw paw plus ornamental ginger for the flower industry - all very exciting projects. This photo:Ginger flower

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