Jan 5, 2009

Northwest Michigan Orchard and Vineyard Show

The 2009 Northwest Orchard and Vineyard Show will be held Tuesday through Thursday, Jan. 20-22, at the Grand Traverse Resort in Acme, Mich. The three-day program will feature both educational sessions and vendor exhibits. Registration will open at 8 a.m. Tuesday. The fee is $30 per person, which will cover all three days.

The Fruit Industry Luncheon will be held Tuesday, and the cost is $15. The Cherry Marketing Institute’s (CMI) luncheon on Wednesday is free to growers that register with CMI. A third luncheon will be held for all growers and vendors on Thursday. It will be free. The exhibit hall will be open during the show and will feature vendors of orchard and vineyard equipment as well as supplies, commodity organizations and other exhibitors.

The Tuesday morning program will focus on wine grape production: grape berry moth control, eradicating powdery mildew and a view of Italian viticulture based on a trip taken by Tom Zabadal and Paolo Sabbatini. Don Koivisto, the new director of the Michigan Department of Agriculture, will speak at noon at the Fruit Industry Luncheon.

For those interested in enology, a special session will be held concurrently on Tuesday afternoon. Guest speaker Paul Gospodarczyk, enology instructor at the Des Moines Area Community College in Iowa, will present on the use of sulfur in winemaking. For tree fruit growers, Tuesday afternoon will feature Larry Hull, an entomologist from Penn State University. He will be discussing the ongoing issue of spray coverage, in particular alternate-row versus every-row spray. He also will talk about the efficacy of new insecticides.

Lyndon Kelly will talk about new irrigation systems and the potential to use them for nutrition and pest management. A wine tasting and hors d’oeuvre social hour will follow the educational sessions. At 6 p.m., a MAEAP Phase I program on water-use reporting will take place.

CMI will hold its annual meeting on Wednesday morning, beginning at 8:30. The afternoon sessions will start off with a review of the Sweet Cherry Summit, which will be followed by updates on American brown rot and cherry leaf spot control in cherries. Larry Gut will be here to talk about successful insecticide spray programs for cherry, and John Cline from the University of Guelph has some interesting new work using gibberellic acid in sweet cherries. Sweet cherries under tunnels will round out the day.

The third day will start off with Cline discussing the potential for new apple rootstocks, particularly those that show promise for cold climates. Jim Flore will present on his work with crop load balance in Honeycrisp, and Mark Whalon has some new information on using growth regulators and biopesticides in the orchard. Fire blight resistance will be discussed. A few regulatory issues will also be on tap: GAP standards, water-use regulation and how the new Farm Bill will work for each farm. Phil Schwallier will discuss how to successfully use Apogee and Retain in apple orchards.

The Orchard and Vineyard Show program is co-sponsored by the Grand Traverse Fruit Growers’ Council, Parallel 45 Vines and Wines, Michigan State University Extension, Cherry Marketing Institute and Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station.

For more information, call Duke Elsner at 231-922-4822 or the Northwest Michigan Horticultural Research Station at 231-946-1510.