WINERIES have been urged to sign up to the Australian Wine Industry Code of Conduct.
The code was finalised and signed last December by Wine Grape Growers Australia and the Winemakers Federation of Australia.
Murray Valley Winegrowers chief executive officer Mike Stone said both national bodies had alerted wineries to the importance of the code - which has been adopted by Constellation, Foster's and Orlando - and urged them to commit to it.
Young Leader award
SIXTH-generation Heatherton vegetable grower, Rick Butler, has won Horticulture Australia's Young Leader award.
Mr Butler, 31, succeeded in obtaining funding from Victoria's Smart Water Fund to design and build a soft vegetable washing system that saves up to 80,000 litres of potable drinking water each day.
The machine is now manufactured and sold by Tripax Engineering.
The Graham Gregory Award for excellence in horticulture was awarded to Peter McMaugh, the first Australian scientist to specialise in turf research.
Working holiday-makers
THE number of working holiday-makers doing harvest work to gain a second year visa leapt by 84 per cent in the 12 months to June 30.
The latest figures from the Department of Immigration shows 21,727 backpackers successfully applied for a second year stay in 2008-09.
That was compared with 11,816 the previous year.
Harvest consultant Tracey Leo said this was accompanied by an increase of almost 17 per cent in the number of first year working holiday visas issued, from 142,365 to 165,969.
