Jonathan Brookes

Jonathan has been involved in various roles within the horticultural industry for 20 years and has a strong practical background, with a particular focus on pipfruit.

Jonathan specialises in helping professional growers identify and monitor key performance indicators for the orchard business, and find practical, cost-effective solutions to help lift performance and optimise profitability.

"I have seen many good growers fail through working very hard, but not focussing their efforts to the areas within their business where the biggest gains can be made. Often a fresh set of eyes are needed to identify those opportunities."

As well as providing direct advice to grower groups and individual growers, Jonathan manages the Horticultural Technical Services team in Hawke's Bay.

Services provided by the Technical team include:

• Irrigation monitoring and calibration.
• Sprayer calibration and training.
• Independent kiwifruit and apple maturity analysis.
• Agrichemical trial assessments - trial design and setup, application and data collection.
• Fruit damage assessments.
• Pest and disease monitoring.
• Collecting on-orchard information to help monitor industry trends.
• Optimising the yield/size combinations of fruit through:
  • Young tree trunk cross sectional area measurements.
  • Winter bud counts.
  • Tree row volume measurements.
  • Fruit size monitoring.

For an example of some of the services provided by Jonathan's team, visit www.hortwatch.com.

Contact Details

office : Hawke's Bay
email : .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
phone : 06 872 7071
mobile : 027 208 8750