Preliminary results from kiwifruit biochar trials

Dr Pranoy Pal has an association with biochar reaching back to his post-doctoral work at Lincoln University in 2012. Pranoy is now the Kiwifruit Technical Manager at Trevelyan’s Pack and Cool – New Zealand’s largest family-owned kiwifruit and avocado packhouse. Pranoy’s aim to use regenerative agriculture principles to horticulture, aligns well with the company’s one of the core principles of sustainability.

From one of the recent trials, he quotes, “Our trial involves the testing of the regenerative agriculture concept – we have sown a 16-species seed mix – a seed only, a seed mix plus biochar, biochar only and a control treatment. The trial is in its infancy (started in Sept 2022) but are planning to run it as a multiyear trial. We are doing a chemical and biological testing of the soil across the treatments. We have partial funding from Zespri on this one. Another similar trial is being planned on another kiwifruit block this upcoming season. The biochar used was sourced from SoilPro, Pukekohe, applied at 1 ton/ha – although I would have liked it to be at least 3 ton/ha. The results of BC+seeds had the biggest impact in our study.

Here is a link to Pranoy’s Linkedin post connected with this work which is also supported by Zespri.


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