BOOMAROO Nurseries had a new seedling tray on display at the East Gippsland Vegetable Innovation Days – designed using 3D imaging technology.
The new 182 seedling tray – with a cell design exclusive to Boomarro Nurseries – provides 26 per cent more cells than the premium 144 cell tray.
Boomaroo’s senior territory and capability manager, Steven Winter, said it will be an improvement in efficiency.
“More than 4000 more seedlings can be propagated from a stack of 10 frames,” Mr Winter said.
“And we’ve ensured it’s fully compatible with existing Boomaroo frames and on-farm planting equipment.”
On-farm trials of the locally manufactured tray have occurred in Victoria and Queensland, showing efficiency savings for leek, lettuce and broccoli growers.
“There were two key reasons for developing the 182-tray,” Mr Winter said.
“Principally, we wanted to provide another value option to our customers, growing more seedlings and resulting in cost savings.
“Our other reason, we wanted to develop a tray dedicated to leeks.
“If you can grow a healthy root ball for leeks, it also works well for lettuce and brassica seedlings.”
With less air incursion and a slightly rounded shape, the roots were encouraged to curl around when they hit the bottom of the ball.
“The seedling can also go out younger and with guaranteed forward moving,” Mr Winter said.
The tray was more than a year in development, after approaching Deakin University at Geelong (Victoria) and setting its design as a class project.
“Two students came up with a design and the 3D printer was used to determine compatibility with leeks,” Mr Winter said.
There was some tweaking applied before a final design was approved.
While the original mould was made in China, all the seedling trays are manufactured in rural Victoria.
“During the trials, in terms of the plant, we’ve measured up to 10 per cent labour saving – where planting has been done by skilled employees – and other efficiency gains on farm,” Mr Winter said.
“The seedling itself is better value to the grower.”
Full trial results will be publicly available after August but having the tray on show at the field days has brought commercial orders flooding in for Spring planting.
Boomaroo Nurseries supplies about 300 million seedlings to growers across Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia.
Located in Lara, Victoria, the company has 20 hectares under production.
