More on the Future of Cherry Technology

More on the Future of Cherry Technology. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report.

The cherry orchard of the future. What will it look like? Dr. Matt Whiting with WSU recently discussed some of the technology aspects of future cherry varieties and rootstocks and today turns some attention to the physical nature of the orchard of the future.

WHITING: A few years ago I would have come up and said to you well the only question that we have now is whether you are planer or two-dimensional structure should be vertical or it should be angled. And it comes down to the bearing surface and the yield potential

He says there has been a lot of research done on both systems.

WHITING: We're seeing this transition as we saw a decade ago more from the super-spindle systems with apples to those upright "V's." The reason is this crazy stylistic representation of whole tree light interception. Early in the morning when the sun comes up you've got, in essence, full shade on the ground and you've got 100% light interception. Of course that declines as the sun comes overhead and at midday you've got very, very low light interception.

Another area Whiting discusses is thinning.

WHITING: I can't possibly cover all the possible new technologies about thinning but I wanted to talk about efficacy to selectivity. This is the transition. You's got to understand we're beginning now with a state of the art that's effective. So the effectivity is very high, right? When you prune, you remove spurs. That is a very effective crop load management tool. Now what we're trying to do is move more towards selectivity.

That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.