The Macadamia Protection Programme (MaPP) team and University of Pretoria (UP) farm workers held a major tree planting session on the 18 and 19 August where they planted about 320 Macadamia seedlings. The 320 seedlings included four cultivars: A4, Nelmak 2, 816 and the most commonly planted cultivar, 695. The seedlings will be used in Angel Maduke’s PhD project where she will be looking at the influence of water stress on Botryosphaeriaceae diseases expression. The trial will include both drought and flooding as stress factors plus one species of the Botryosphaeriaceaewhich is selected based on aggressiveness and dominance. The trial will run from September 2022 to April 2023 at the UP farm where the irrigation system for different watering regimes is installed.

A huge thank you to all the farm workers who kindly helped us plant and move the trees and to the MaPP team for all their help and support!