Uniformity of budding and flowering in cherry production is one of the most important variables for obtaining high-quality fruit, with stable yields and good volume. By uniformizing budding and flowering, competition between them is reduced, allowing better regulation of the fruit load, achieving more homogeneous fruit, of good size and commercial quality, thus increasing the profitability of the orchard.
The budding and flowering uniformers allow for the optimization of cultural tasks, since by concentrating these phenological states a better organization of the application and execution moments of the agronomic management is allowed, which translates into a better management of the orchard, reducing the time and labor requirements.
For this reason, IBITERRA presents Ibiactive ® Break as an excellent tool to achieve uniformity of budding and flowering in cherry trees. Ibiactive ® Break is a mineral complex of nitrogen (15%) and calcium (6%) enriched with low molecular weight carboxylic acids, which increase the osmotic potential at the cellular level, activating the cellular metabolism of plants in recession and triggering floral opening, thus promoting uniformity and concentration of flowering.
In order to evaluate the effect of applying Ibiactive ® Break on the advancement, uniformity of flowering and productivity of cherry trees, IBITERRA conducted a study with the Montefrutal Innovation Center. The trial was conducted in a commercial orchard of Santina variety cherry trees, located in the commune of Sagrada Familia, Maule Region. This orchard was treated under the management of the commercial agricultural company to obtain fruit for export.
In this evaluation, the treatments were T0, which corresponds to the control treatment, which includes standard field management with application of hydrogenated cyanamide, and T1, which corresponds to the application of hydrogenated cyanamide plus the application of the commercial product Ibiactive® Break at 5% with calcium nitrate at 6%. It should be noted that the trees that received the application of the treatments presented a similar productive potential at the beginning of the season.
Figure 1 shows the flowering curves of both treatments during the 22/23 season. This figure shows that the application of Ibiactive ® Break maintained the flowering start date (10% of open flowers). However, at 60% of flowering, an advance of two days was achieved with respect to the control treatment, meaning a reduction of 16% in the time needed to reach 60% of open flowers.
On the other hand, the application of Ibiactive ® Break advanced full flowering by 5 days (80% of open flowers) compared to the control treatment, reducing the time needed to reach this phenological state by 28%.
Figure 2 shows the number of days that the trees in each treatment were in bloom, with more than 20% of the flowers open. It can be observed that the T0 treatment began flowering on September 9 and ended on September 30, presenting a duration of 21 days. In contrast to the Ibiactive ® Break treatment, which began flowering on September 9 and ended flowering on September 26, that is, it presented a flowering period lasting 17 days. This means that the application of Ibiactive ® Break managed to concentrate and homogenise flowering, reducing the duration of flowering by 4 days, that is, 19% less than the control treatment.
It is important to note that by achieving a homogeneous and concentrated flowering, it is possible to obtain better pollination and, therefore, better setting, facilitating the harvest and increasing the yield of the cherry trees.
By using Ibiactive ® Break you will be able to improve the homogeneity of the flowering of your cherry trees, obtaining stable productions, with better yield and fruit quality.
