Load regulation is essential for obtaining good-sized fruit, and this type of pruning allows for unifying the size and distributing the sugar in the fruit.
The second most suitable method of load regulation is bud thinning.
Controlling the fruit load of the cherry tree in order to renew its reproductive structures is essential to avoid an excess of fruit and thus a gradual weakening of the trees, which leads to a decrease in the quality of the fruit.
The period of greatest cell division of the fruit, where the growth potential of the cherry fruit is established, occurs 30 to 35 days after full bloom. This is when the roots are just “awakening”, so in this process it relies on the reserves accumulated during the previous spring and summer.
To obtain good-sized fruit, load regulation is essential and pruning is the best alternative for this purpose, being an efficient and cheaper method.
Pruning that maintains self-supporting fruit wood serves to unify the criteria of size and sugar distribution.
Before pruning and defining its intensity, together with the number of fruit shoots that should be left on the tree, it is important to take into account the variety/rootstock combination, the quality of the shoots that the tree has, how the fruit load was in the previous season, climatic conditions and the accumulation of cold during the period.
“Pruning is an effective method of load regulation where, based on the recognition of productive potential, in terms of the number of fruit centers per hectare or the number of fruit centers per plant, this number can be regulated to somehow give meaning to or manage the productive potential that is desired each year. What does this mean? What are the procedures for this load regulation pruning? It is to eliminate hanging material, weak material, to cut back very long branches so that the branch is self-supporting with its fruit, among others.” said Carlos Tapia, director of Avium.
The second most suitable method to regulate the load is the thinning of buds, which will depend on the fertility and health condition in each case and increasing the leaf/fruit ratio before competition with the shoot occurs.
As far as the management of the operation is concerned, bud thinning is a much more objective task than flower thinning. Especially if, prior to an analysis of bud fertility, the intensity of this thinning is determined.
“If the result of a bud fertility analysis with respect to a potential fruit set is that, for example, the technical recommendation is to “leave three buds per bud”, the supervision and quality control of this work is very objective. However, with flowers and fruits it is not so simple; for example, it is difficult to define which and how many units correspond to removing a 45% of flowers or fruits. However, removing the excess fruit late is always better than leaving it on the tree, even if there are only a few weeks left until harvest.” the expert added.
Bibliographic references.
– Carlos Tapia-Personal communication.
– Importance of regulating fruit load- Agronomy and Forestry UC-Marlenne Araya-Paula Wedeles.
– Regulation of fruit load in cherry trees: a practice that allows increasing export volumes- Fruiting and diversification-Dolores Raffo-Tadeo Ballivian.
