On behalf of the Chair and the board of ANFA, I wanted to take this opportunity to wish our members a happy and prosperous 2025. As ANFA celebrates its first anniversary, I wanted to thank all of you for your ongoing support.

I am writing this post for two reasons.

The first is an explanation, of sorts.

Establishing a peak industry body is not for the fainthearted and our progress has been much slower than we had hoped for. The legal, the compliance and the governance overheads in the establishment of a body like ANFA have taken precious time and effort over the last 12 months. While these things are not glamourous, they are crucial for the proper functioning of ANFA. As a board, we ask each of you to bear with us as we continue these activities into 2025.

The second is to focus specifically on fingerlimes and events in 2025.

By now, most of you will have 2025’s fingerlimes on your trees. Here in Hampton (Darling Downs, South East Queensland), we are about a month ahead of where we were this time last year. We had a warmer than normal winter and we also had an uncharacteristically damp start to spring. The flowering on our D’Emerald commenced in very early spring and we seem to have had a very successful fruit set. Fruit set has been even throughout the orchard and we have begun picking to meet local market demands. As the D’Emerald have continued to flower, we expect to have fruit through until early June. Our Byron Sunrise followed its normal pattern of flowering about a month after our D’Emerald. Fruit set on our Byron Sunrise has been staggeringly good with most trees fully laden with fruit. We expect to begin picking Byron Sunrise in mid-late February.

As is usual for us with a heavy fruit set, the trees are under a lot of stress. Leaf yellowing is beginning to show in the Byron Sunrise as are isolated incidents of scale. Fortunately we have not been impacted by heavy rain this year and we’ve managed to maintain consistent watering. That said, we have had 200mm in the November-December period so we have been mowing and spraying to keep weeds and grasses in check.

After attending ANFA’s November Field Day at Chris Findlater’s farm in Northern NSW, we commenced a pruning regime that we think has been of benefit to our trees. We had previously only done minimal skirting to our trees but in late November, we pruned much harder and gave our trees shape. We have found the trees have responded well and coupled with Chris’ nutrition concept of ‘treat them like citrus’, we are seeing an increase in yield and vitality. I would be interested to hear from other growers as to how their orchards are performing this year.

The ANFA board will be setting out a draft plan for Field Days and other events for 2025. We will aim to have a draft plan out to all of you after our 13 January board meeting. One event I did want to flag is Hort Connections 2025 (https://hortconnections.com.au/) due to take place in Brisbane 4-6 June. Hort is an ideal opportunity for all growers to come together and visit the largest horticulture trade show in Australia and New Zealand. We plan to hold an ANFA networking event at Hort and will also endeavour to include a field visit during Hort.

According to our constitution, ANFA is required to hold an AGM in the first half of this year. At the AGM, all foundation board members will be required to stand down from their positions and seek re-election. Any financial member of ANFA can also nominate for a board position. All positions will be put to the vote. If you would like to play a role in growing ANFA and the Australian Fingerlime industry, I encourage you to nominate for a board position.

Finally, if anyone has any questions, feedback, or ideas for 2025, please reach out via email (info@australianfingerlimealliance.com.au). I would also encourage any of you to ‘put finger to keyboard’ and write an article for this page. A large part of the reason for ANFA’s existence is to share experiences, thoughts and ideas on fingerlimes. You are all part of an exciting new industry and by sharing your experience future generations of fingerlime growers in Australia will benefit.

Happy New Year!

Chip Saint