Improving Marketable Yield of Premium Quality Cherries

Media Summary “Improving marketable yield of premium quality fruit” is possible. Two successful seasons of this HAL funded project run by the Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture have shown it is possible to reduce cracking and improve yields without losing quality. The 2010/2011 season showed that spray applications, high crop loads, high volumes of irrigation and removing extension growth during a rainfall event all reduced cracking significantly. Cracks at the top and the base of the fruit were reduced with sprays and high crop loads, and large side cracks in the flesh of the fruit were reduced under high irrigation, and with extension pruning. Using sprays and maintaining crop load were shown as viable techniques to reduce cracking. Without spray treatments the equivalent of 2.3 tonnes of fruit per hectare was lost due to cracking. The best performing spray treatment reduced this loss to 1.9 t/ha. Furthermore, fruit quality does not seem to suffer under these treatments – marketable yield can be improved by reducing cracking. In fact, some sprays significantly increased the average fruit size. More importantly, the increase in size is not just significant on paper, but actually increased the number of trees with fruit in the larger class sizes therefore having the potential to increase margins. This project, combined with previous research undertaken in the last few years is now leading towards a more comprehensive understanding of management of cracking in Australia.