Melon quality improvement program

This investment facilitates and monitors the adoption of the minimum quality standards recently developed for the melon industry, with the ultimate goal of increasing consumption and demand for melons.

This program's efforts to improve melon quality and consistency continue the work of the previous through levy-funded project Quality improvements in the melon supply chain (VM21001). The intended outcome of the program is that the quality of melons available to consumers at wholesale and retail improves over the project's life, as reflected in the monitoring results against the new standards showing increased consumer acceptability. This will increase consumption and demand.

The program has four major components:

1. Wholesale/retail quality assessment, including transport monitoring and distribution centres.
2. On-farm quality assessment, including understanding the reasons for non-compliance and developing solutions to mitigate that.
3. Development of tools and sampling strategies to help growers assess maturity to meet the new minimum maturity standards consistently.
4. Communication, engagement and liaison with growers, wholesalers, and retailers.