*Paul Millen at the NZDFI virtual workshop*

In-person events have become increasingly difficult to organise so we tried something new last month – a Field Day via zoom. The 2.5 hour NZ Dryland Forests Initiative (NZDFI) workshop had 120 registrations, including 12 from Australia.

A key focus of the workshop was to present the tree breeding and other research work NZDFI has undertaken in Marlborough.

“It proved popular and was far more than we could have catered for, had it been held in person, locally”, says Susan Foster, MRC’s Office and Account Manager.

Workshop participants were taken on a tour of four Marlborough sites to see durable eucalypts being grown and utilised. Discussed were market opportunities, and how to establish and grow durable eucalypts, linking this with NZDFI’s vision.

Chaired by Shaf van Ballekom, NZDFI Chair and CEO of Proseed NZ, the University of Canterbury team coordinated the workshop from one of the campus studios, monitoring the Zoom chat area, where people asked questions of the panel.

“It was a lot of work to put together and was only possible because of one of our PhD students is skilled and equipped to make the videos we used”, says Paul Millen.

Once the recording is online, we will share a link with newsletter readers so be sure to look out for it.

In the meantime, Stuff covered NZDFI’s vision for a sustainable hardwood industry in this informative article.