Amanteco Almonds - "Good 2021 harvest, trees looking good, and 25% water savings"

It is amazing how conditions can differ from one place to the next – from one part of the world to another. In the past 4 days some areas in New South Wales, Australia, have received more than 850mm of rain, which relates to 34 inches in 4 days. It is a different story across the Indian Ocean… "These amounts represent almost 8 years’ worth of rain on our farm here in the Western Cape, South Africa” says Amanteco Almonds’ Farm Operations Manager, Stephan le Roux to Paul Grobler, our Sales & Customer Services Manager.

Amanteco Almonds have been with Phytech for almost one full season now, and this has been an extremely dry & very interesting one. Currently, Stephan Le Roux and his team is busy harvesting full steam ahead!

Listening to the trees, changing long-held practices

We can't control the weather, but by connecting growers to their trees we're giving them more control than ever to optimize their growth, health and productivity.

As with any new technology, growers need to put their trust in the unknown. Once Stephan and his team realized the value of direct plant measurements and the accuracy of the plant-based information, they made drastic changes to their irrigation schedules based on what their trees are telling them.

An example of a grower optimizing production during the season : adapting irrigation according to the trees' real-time needs:

Changes were made to the amount of applied irrigation during the shifts, as well as the timing of the irrigation based on the environmental conditions and plant-data. There were specific days where Amanteco were advised by 3rd parties to irrigate up to 10mm, but, because they followed what their trees were saying, they applied less that 4mm and achieved very positive growth rates and tree recovery results.

Some recent Q&A between Phytech & Amanteco: -