Reflective Fabrics

Reflective Fabrics. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.
There are a number of ways for tree fruit growers to increase their bottom line and Tory Schmidt with the Washington Tree Fruit Research Commission gets us up to date.
SCHMIDT: The most powerful way to affect our bottom line is to increase our price. There’s not a whole lot we can do as growers about increasing the amount of money we get back from the warehouse but if we grow fruit that’s more target fruit, that’s larger size and higher colored we can get better returns.
Another way is to increase yield and then of course you can always cut costs. Schmidt says that reflective fabrics can affect the first two in a positive way. The Tree Fruit Research Commission has been conducting trials on two fabrics; plain reflective mylar and products from Extenday.
SCHMIDT: They can be deployed season long. The mylar products you put our 2 to 3 weeks before harvest and they’re generally just untended to improve color. They’re not going to do a whole lot for your fruit set or your fruit size.
In side by side comparisons between a control group, the mylar and Extenday, Schmidt says there are significant differences.
SCHMIDT: In the exterior of the canopy there’s not a lot of difference between Extenday and control but in the inside of the canopy where we have more shading we see about a 50% increase in carbon fixation in the Extenday tree. That means those trees have more cabohydrates that they’re fixing that are going to be available to promote shoot growth, root growth and of greatest interest to us fruit growth as well.
Tomorrow more on the topic of reflective fabrics.
That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.