Grant McKay

Grant is manager of the Agfirst Technical Services Laboratory, which provides a wide range of services to horticultural industries. Grant's key interest area is in pre and post harvest fruit quality technologies, conducting field trials, new variety and product evaluation, and development.
Grant has a wide range of experience within the kiwifruit, pipfruit and viticulture sectors. Since 2004 he has been involved in farm monitoring for the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry for pipfruit and viticulture, as well as multiple research projects for Pipfruit New Zealand. Research projects include Benchmarking of Intensive Orchard Production for Nelson/Marlborough and Otago, “Alternatives to Carbaryl”, Braeburn Quality and Eating Experience, Increasing Dry Matter in Nelson Kiwifruit, Spray Application Technology in Dwarf Apple Orchards, Seasonal Dry Matter Development Curves, Improving Outturn Quality through: Changing Harvest Quality Measures and Parameters and Blue Printing Tree Form in intensive planting systems.
Projects he has more recently been involved in are: Modified Apple Submission Profile, Influencing Dry Matter Content in Apple Fruit, Mechanical Bloom Thinning, Regional benchmarking of dry matter concentration in apples and the commercialization of predictive brix and dry matter testing services.
Grant is continually involved with private sector projects for various horticultural chemical distributors and supply companies focused toward product evaluation, development and efficacy. He has also taught units of the National Certificate in Viticulture (Level 4 - advanced) and is a hobbyist bee keeper.

The range of services provided by the technical services lab include:

• Fruit maturity and quality
• Field and post harvest trials
• Monitoring and systems development
• Financial farm monitoring for viticulture and pipfruit
• Technical advice to growers
• Contract Research
• Budget and Cash Flow preparation
• Harvest Management, Crop Estimation
• Technology Transfer
• Project Management
• Research and Development
• Kiwigreen
   

Contact Details

office : Motueka
email : .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
phone : 03 528 0330
mobile : 0275 348 629