What was it all about?

InfoPome is the apple and pear industry’s stock tracking system. Cool store data is voluntarily provided by growers and collated into a regular national report of the amounts of apples and pears in cool store. The report is separated by variety and state, allowing growers to see stock levels currently available in storage.

InfoPome has the potential to help growers make better business decisions when it comes to deciding when to move stock. Detailed reports are available to contributors and key industry representatives within Australia.

This project supported the maintenance and development of InfoPome between 2012 and early 2015. Improvements to the system during this period included:

• Investigating the feasibility of capturing data fortnightly instead of monthly
• Capturing additional data to improve estimates of fruit availability
• Investigating the entry of data online.

The data revealed a similar pattern each year: cool store stocks rise rapidly during the harvest months of February, March and April and are slowly reduced over the following months.

Better engagement with growers is required to maintain the system and to increase frequency of data collection and reporting.

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Learn more about InfoPome (which continues to be funded through other Hort Innovation Apple and Pear Fund investments) on the APAL website here.