Travelling East, Down Under and to hell and gone...

摘要

I recently had the opportunity to spend a week in each of Japan, Australia and Ethiopia. The XIII International Plant Bioregulator Symposium held at Chiba near Tokyo was very well attended by South Africans.This should come as no surprise considering the dependency of our industries on plant bioregulators for everything from rooting, fruit set, fruit thinning, branching, flower initiation, ripening, ripening delay, rest breaking, etc. Symposium highlights included the latest researchfindings on superficial scald, apple cracking and dormancy breaking - good research contacts were made. Anton Muller of Kromco did the industry proud when presenting his research on young tree management under South African mild winter conditions - thisresearch is on par with everything the career academics presented. The "interesting" moments of the trip involved getting lost in Tokyo, missing the last late night metro in Tokyo, and hunting down McDonalds so that Pierre and the guys could eat "real food" instead of raw meaty unknowns...