Western Australian Industry Research Articles

SEPARATING HIGH HARVEST TEMPERATURE EFFECTS ON POSTHARVEST AVOCADO QUALITY

The logistics of the current Australian and Californian recommendations to harvest avocado below 30 °C and remove field heat within 6 hours of harvest are increasingly being challenged as the Western Australian industry expands. Despite this, there has been little feedback of quality sacrifice in the market as a result. Through factorial experiments, we harvested both shaded and sun-exposed 'Hass' avocado over an ambient air temperature range of 27-34 °C, subjected to a 2, 6 or 24 h pre-cooling delay and a 14 or 28 day cool-storage, before ripening and quality assessment. We found significant temperature correlations to softening, vascular browning, body rots and, when a temperature-by-delay interaction was considered, skin colour. The relationships of temperature to softening and body rot were quadratic: softening increased significantly up to an ambient temperature of about 30 °C but did not change significantly thereafter; body rots did not change significantly up to 30 °C but declined significantly thereafter. The interaction effect of temperature-by-delay on colour was also quadratic when fruit were subjected to a 24 h pre-cooling delay. Fruit colour increased significantly up to about 30 °C but did not change significantly thereafter. The relationship of temperature to vascular browning was negatively linear; showing a significant decline over the range of 27-34 °C. There was no significant main effect of sun-exposure, although there were significant interactions; showing that postharvest behaviour varied between shaded and sun-exposed fruit. However, the average elevation of 6 °C above shaded fruit temperatures was not as large as reported by previous studies and was thus interpreted with caution. In light of the results, experiments have been designed to further explore the main effects and interactions of temperature, sunlight, and postharvest handling on avocado quality and physiology.

Regional sustainability initiatives: the growth of green jobs in Australia

There is no doubt that one of the fastest growing international industry ‘sectors’ is environmental goods and services. The size of the annual global environment market is estimated at around A$1,000 billion (Department of Industry, Science and Resources, 2000, p. 21). There are many cases of extraordinary growth in ‘green jobs’ in recent years. For example, worldwide demand for organic agricultural produce has grown 20% every year for the last 10 years, and is anticipated to grow from US$11billion in 1997 to US$100billion by 2006 (McCoy and Parlevliet, 1998). Data presented in the Sustainable Energy Policy Green Paper (Department of Primary Industries and Energy, 1996) predict the world demand for renewable energy to grow by 82% in the period 1990 to 2020. This article reviews the current state of knowledge about green jobs in Australia. It draws some initial conclusions about what is likely to ‘drive’ worldwide green job generation in the foreseeable future, and then reviews recent work that examines the implications for Australia. The main focus, however, is a recent Western Australian industry survey undertaken to determine the current nature, and future potential, of green jobs in that State. The article concludes with a range of policy recommendations for government.

Industrial Relations in Western Australia

The main aim of this paper is to provide an overview of West Australian industrial relations that is succinct, comprehensive and useful for students, practitioners and others interested in the subject. It sets the scene with a short survey of the history of Western Australian industrial relations. The principal parties in the system are identified and their major features discussed. The main processes used in Western Australian industrial relations are analysed, and the major outcomes, in the forms of wages and conditions, are outlined. The paper concludes that the dynamic and developing nature of the Western Australian system of industrial relations is evidenced by the emergence within the past twenty-five years of the leading actors in the system, the Trades and Labor Council, the Confederation of Western Australian Industry, the Office of Industrial Relations, and the Industrial Relations Commission. The present operations of the system are complex, and there are pressures for change in the system. Although the long-term effects of the 1986-87 Robe River dispute and related developments are yet to be seen, further reforms in Western Australian industrial laws seem inevitable.