Soil amendments to improve apple establishment

Planting and establishing new apple orchards incurs significant costs and it can take four years to reach full production before these costs can start to be recouped. Trees from redundant orchards that are grubbed have been traditionally burned, but there is increasing interest in converting grubbed trees to biochar to retain the carbon that has been sequestered by an orchard. In this project, biochar, Trichoderma species and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) will be used as soil amendments at planting time to assess if they might hasten establishment and production, whilst improving orchard sustainability and reducing carbon footprint of orchards.