How climate change and extreme weather are impacting growers in Italy. By Anna Mouton. Prof. Luca Corelli Grappadelli leads the Ecophysiology Laboratory in the Department of Agricultural and Food Sciences at the University of Bologna in Italy. His main research…
A summary of Hortgro-funded apple-rootstock research projects. By Anna Mouton. Rootstock research at Hortgro Science includes evaluation trials and horticultural and disease-related projects. Rootstock evaluation The first Hortgro-funded trials of Geneva rootstocks, led by Carlo Costa of the ARC Infruitec-Nietvoorbij,…
A summary of past and present Hortgro-funded Forelle research not covered elsewhere in this issue. Hortgro-funded work on other pear cultivars is not discussed here – consult the research inventory in the PDF for a complete list of pear-related projects.…
Developing a South African phenophase-temperature database. By Anna Mouton. A need to better understand seasonal temperatures and bud break in pome and stone fruit has inspired a new project that aims to establish a phenophase-temperature database. The project is jointly…
Why is there so much variability? By Anna Mouton. Inconsistent fruit quality and ripening is the bane of apple growers everywhere. How is one supposed to harvest at optimum maturity when there is so much variation on the same tree?…
Do chill units tell us anything? By Anna Mouton. The idea behind chill models is to figure out what trees will do in spring. Will they wake up smartly and crack on with flowering? Or will they linger over bud-break…
The fundamental flaws of chill models Why they don’t work well in South Africa. By Anna Mouton. Chill models matter — their outputs have real-life implications. Growers in areas with mild winters depend on chill models for the management of…
The challenges of calculating chill. By Anna Mouton. The amount of winter chill a deciduous fruit tree receives will affect how it wakes up in spring. Insufficient chill results in trees that linger over flowering and foliation — growers will…
How it works and why it matters. By Anna Mouton. The ancestors of the apples we grow today probably came from some freezing mountain on the borders of Kazakhstan — not from the Garden of Eden. These trees evolved winter…