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Growing a career in cherries

The Adelaide Hills' bountiful cherry harvests begin with Montacute.

Among the rural vistas of the Montacute Valley, sprouting fruit heralds the start of cherry season in the Adelaide Hills.

As one of the closest places in the Mt Lofty Ranges to metropolitan Adelaide, Montacute is typically among the first to yield cherries every year, thanks to its earlier emergence from the cold of winter and early spring.

An ideal year without overly wet or frosty conditions will result in bountiful cherry harvests, beginning with Montacute, Cherryville and Norton Summit before moving east and south-east from there.

The early fruiting in the valley Dr Andrew Granger calls home and the ripple effect that spreads out from there is much like Andrew’s career as an expert in the field of genetics and pollination, which he says was inspired by a youth spent exploring Montacute’s dense bushland.

“Growing up in the valley, me and the other boys in the area would roam freely, camping in the bush and surviving the weekend,” he says.

“We’d come home from school on Friday night, throw our bags in the door, say ‘see you later Mum’, grab some camping gear and head off into the wild, hunting rabbits, living off the land.

“Then we’d be back home Sunday night, just in time for a good old roast.”

Reflecting on the days and nights spent exploring the local flora, Andrew says the bush helped develop a sense of curiosity about plants.

“But the other thing for me was my exposure to the local horticulture economy, very much based around growing cherries and selling them at markets in Adelaide,” he says.

It was in the 1990s that Andrew began the first-ever nationally recognised cherry breeding program at the centre, which pioneered the study of cherry DNA to help develop entirely new varieties.

“I always found it really interesting and exciting, I wanted to know more and more and then I found myself really diving deep, wanting to know how nature works at a genetic level.”

For more than 40 years, the nearby Lenswood Horticulture Centre was a centre of excellence for research and development that benefited fruit industries.

It was established in the 1960s after the Department of Agriculture purchased land throughout Lenswood and planted dozens of hectares of fruit orchards.

Growers and horticultural scientists flocked from all over to study the ways apples and pears could be grown and to see how well other fruit, berry and nut crops fared in the Hills.

Andrew was about 16 when he first heard about the centre and it was around that time that he made a decision about where he wanted his life to take him.

“Unlike a lot of my friends, I knew from an early age exactly what I wanted to do,” he says.

“All I wanted to be was a cherry grower and, while careers counselling at school made me believe the capital investment to start up my own business in that area was prohibitive, my aptitude for science helped me recognise I could do something that helped growers everywhere.”

After studying at university and a stint working for the Department of Agriculture, he became the Lenswood Horticulture Centre’s lead researcher.

“When I rolled up to Lenswood, there was a real push around the country for expansion into export markets for not only cherries, but a whole bunch of horticulture and ag,” he says.

“Cherries were one of the biggest though, there was and still is huge demand worldwide, and so we looked at that industry and we asked ‘what are the main factors to be improved to get existing growers to plant more?’.

“We hadn’t looked at the growing systems for a long time, so we started to experiment with more intensive, modern systems – planting the trees closer, allowing for earlier investment pay-offs.

“So we developed the Lenswood System, an intensive modern system of growing cherries.”

The Lenswood System of orchard design uses tree-trellising, bird netting, dwarfing rootstocks and fruit growth management and is today a widely used method of cherry growing.

It was in the 1990s that Andrew began the first-ever nationally-recognised cherry breeding program at the centre, which pioneered the study of cherry DNA to help develop entirely new varieties.

At his direction, six new types of cherry were developed, including the more resilient Sir Don and Dame Roma varieties.

“We wanted to enhance the international demand for local fruit and we developed new varieties to not just be more resilient to inclement weather, but more appealing to those overseas markets,” Andrew says.

“To supply export markets, we needed consistent cropping and self-fertile cherry varieties that pollinate themselves.

“We were able to achieve that in the development of six new varieties.”

Today, four of those varieties are grown by cherry growers locally, interstate and overseas and, while two varieties didn’t catch on, Andrew says the SA Research and Development Institute (SARDI) is likely to still have means to grow them in the future, if it saw a need.

It was at SARDI in the mid-1990s that Andrew met the love of his life, Midori, who worked in plant pathology. “We’re both deep-seated plant nerds,” Andrew says, without the slightest hint of sarcasm. “But she’s more grounded than me, which is absolutely what I’ve needed considering both of our work has consisted of, well, what we put in the ground.

“As Midori’s more of an earth-dweller, as opposed to my ‘flying high in the sky’ sort of thinking, she gives me balance and is really, really good at seeing how things can be done practically.

“I don’t know where I’d be without her.”

‘The Hills … remains an artisanal fruit bowl that is truly unique, even in a global context.’

Their love of science and of one another took them overseas – living in Auckland, NZ, for about a decade where Andrew oversaw more than a dozen research centres around the country.

His contributions have gone beyond just cherries, with his agricultural research expertise now influencing the likes of kiwifruit, hops, wheat, barley and more. But the rich tapestry of input that he has in the way farmers manage their crops may not have been possible without a youth of highs and lows in the Montacute Valley, exploring its plentiful bushland.

It was only a few years ago that he returned to Australia and, through luck or fate, bought back the house that his parents built and that he grew up in.

“It’s amazing to be back, living in the place where my love of horticulture began,” Andrew says.

“I’m finding my roots again, reaffirming my values.

“The Hills might be getting nibbled around the edges by urban development, but it remains an artisanal fruit bowl that is truly unique, even in a global context.

“I’ve travelled the world, worked in some of the most incredible places, but there’s something about the ranges and valleys to the east of Adelaide that you just can’t find anywhere else.”

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