OUR FACILITIES
The Auscitrus seed and budwood facility is located in the Coomealla district of the Sunraysia Region, in far south west NSW.
We have 32ha of land partially planted to dedicated seed and budwood supply trees. These trees are all drip irrigated and fertigated and grown exclusively for bud and seed production. Access is restricted to Auscitrus staff and permitted contractors only, and biosecurity is front of mind with all activities.
The field trees are tested for graft transmissible diseases on a regular basis, according to accepted international standards for seed/budwood production blocks.
In addition, Auscitrus has developed an insect screened budwood production nursery, to grow budwood on potted trees in a rapid multiplication greenhouse. There are currently 2500 square metres of screened budwood house operational, with plans to add another 2500 square metres.
In addition, we have a 300 Sqm propagation house for seedling production and budding, and a 600Sqm repository house which houses the mother trees that provides all our budwood to produce daughter trees.
This is all irrigated from the Murray River (Wentworth weir pool), with nursery irrigation water filtered and treated with chlorine dioxide to prevent diseases entering via the water supply. We hold around 2 weeks supply of water for the nursery at any time. Power for the entire property is backed up by an auto-start generator to ensure continuity of supply for cooling fans and irrigation pumps.
CITRUS FOUNDATION REPOSITORY
Auscitrus maintains two trees of all major commercial citrus varieties in Australia, both public varieties, funded by a Hort Innovation project, and private varieties, charged as a fee for service to the variety owners. These trees are maintained in 50L pots under insect screened and isolated conditions. Only essential staff are permitted entry, only new cutting tools are allowed in the structure, and all cutting tools are sterilised with sodium hypochlorite between every tree. The trees are indexed every year for CTV, and other major pathogens regularly. Trees are allowed to fruit to test for trueness to type, although this is always backed up by field evaluation (by NSW DPI under another Hort Innovation project), so they are tested in real world orchard conditions.
BUDWOOD HOUSE
Auscitrus has recently completed a 2500 square meter budwood production house, fully insect screened and actively cooled using a pad and fan system. Double door insect locks are at the entrances to the structures, and all structures are linked with an insect screened atrium so once inside staff don’t need to leave the insect screened area. Budwood multiplication trees are propagated using wood from the CFR, potted into coir substrate in 7L Plantlogic pots, and hydroponically fed.
Trees will stay in this house for up to 5 years, when they are discarded and replaced with fresh trees. This structure holds 24,000 trees which can produce over 1 million buds per year. Plans are in place to double the size of this structure in coming years.
SEED/BUDWOOD ORCHARD
Auscitrus owns 32 ha of land in the Coomealla district, of which 9ha are planted to citrus seed and budwood supply trees. All budwood in Australia has traditionally be grown in an open orchard setting, with regular indexing for disease. All cutting equipment including hedging saws are thoroughly sterilised with sodium hypochlorite between rows and varieties to prevent cross infection. The majority of Auscitrus budwood still comes from these field trees, although they will slowly be phased out as production increases in the budwood screenhouse.
We have 3ha of rootstock seed production trees of all the major commercial citrus rootstocks. These are harvested during autumn/winter, and the seed extracted using a macerator and water bath system. All seed is heat treated at 52 degrees for 10 minutes and surface sterilised with chlorine before being dried then treated with Thiram fungicide for cool storage. Auscitrus currently produces around 1500-2000kgs of citrus seed per year.