Another year, another challenge! The Macadamia Protection Programme (MaPP) once again attended the annual grower symposium organised by Macadamias South Africa NPC (SAMAC) held at the Ingwenyama Conference and Sports Resort in White River, Mpumalanga from 11-12 October. The symposium was organised around three sessions namely: “Crop protection”, “Trends and dynamics in the global macadamia industry” and “Towards production best practice”, which were amazingly animated by the jokes of the the Master of Ceremonies, the famous TV presenter Mr Derek Watts. The MaPP was well represented in the crop protection session where Dr Gerda Fourie along with her students Angel Maduke, Dee Twiddy, Ashleigh Smith and Elisa Pal presented their progress on pest and pathogen research in front of 600 people! This year the MaPP and Forest Molecular Genetics (FMG) also had an exhibition stand to further interact with growers and industry partners to discuss on-going research and to market the Macadamia DNA fingerprinting platform that is now available to growers.