Developing a capacity to weigh and process almonds at harvest to enhance the efficiency of trials (AL10011)

This is a final research report from Hort Innovation’s historical archives. Please note that as these reports may date back as far as the 1990s, the content and recommendations within them may be superseded by more recent research.

What was it all about?

Global almond consumption had more than doubled over the previous decade from nearly 291,000 tonnes in 1998 to 583,000 tonnes in 2008 (ABA, 2010).

With the aim of taking advantage of increased global consumption and the fact domestic consumption of almonds in Australia was lower than domestic production at the change of the century, the Australian almond industry increased its plantings more than six-fold from 2000. At the time of this report being published, one quarter of the plantings were yet to reach full maturity and future production would continue to rise until 2017 when it was estimated to achieve 86,500 tonnes (ABA, 2010).

Almonds were an attractive crop for investment because the industry had always been profitable, stable and internationally competitive. To maintain the industry competitiveness and to ensure its continued and sustainable expansion it had expanded its research program. Over the 5 years following this report being published, the Almond Industry, the Commonwealth government and other funding partners were likely to invest $10 - 15million in R&D for the industry.

With such a large requirement for the infield weighing and processing of statistical sub-samples, a new method and purchase of appropriate equipment was required. The equipment resulted in a time and therefore financial saving of greater than 50 per cent in comparison to the previous method of collecting and processing the statistical sub-samples.