On Thursday, February 8, the fourth chapter of Reportajes en Smartcherry TV was released, entitled “The kick-off”; the audiovisual work included the participation of the advisor, specialist in cherry production and Technical Director of Avium, Carlos Tapia; the advisor and specialist in nutrition, Valeria Lepe; the producer and precursor of the KGB conduction system, kYM Green; and the Leader of the R&D area of Avium, Emilio Martínez.
”Post-harvest contemplates, in quotes, a whole, there are several factors that will influence this good time of the plant, but definitely what marks it is the programming, the irrigation strategy, that is to say I would say the first on the list and with capital letters and perhaps in neon, is irrigation; the concept of irrigation commands, we can use nutritional strategies, stress prevention, mitigators, etc., but if we are irrigating badly we are in some way canceling out everything that we want to do in parallel with irrigation”, warned Carlos Tapia.
In addition to irrigation, the most important task during the post-harvest of cherry orchards, the report addressed, with the help of specialists, the topic of agronomic management, thermal-hydric stress, sunscreens, foliar analysis, stomatal behavior, and soil and foliar nutrition programs.
"Today (we must) worry about two aspects, the soil nutrition program and the foliar nutrition program (…) well, the idea of replenishing nutrients, mainly Nitrogen, Potassium, some Phosphorus, some Calcium and in some cases if I have to make some special corrections, if I am facing plots with a certain degree of weakness, it is also a time for amendments such as liquid organic matter or some other components that one would like to use.", said advisor Valeria Lepe.
Kym Green, a producer, consultant and pioneer of the KGB management system, was also part of the report. The Australian spoke about the management of post-harvest irrigation in cherry orchards in his country: «What I see is that we have filled our space with good fruiting wood and after the harvest we keep watering. So that good wood at the top keeps growing more and more and more, in some places up to 1.5 meters of new growth at the top, that energy, that shade is damaging the lower quality part of the tree. So we found that if we stop watering after the harvest, we let it dry out, we let the tree stop growing, it thinks it is dying and puts its energy into the fruit.“Kym Green explained.
The report, sponsored by Chemie Agro, Daymsa, Syngenta and Vadpagro, is available on the YouTube channel, Smartcherry TV; on the site it is also possible to relive the three previous episodes that addressed topics such as the complex 2023-2024 cherry season and the Chilean cherry route.
