Morning All,
The met bureau’s forecast for warmer-than-average conditions has proven to be accurate to this stage of the season. This is tracking as the warmest start to winter since I started monitoring chill conditions in 2000.
One of the key impacts of inadequate chill in deciduous fruit trees is not only poor fruit set during flowering, but leaf out and bud burst is often also impacted by the emergence of leaf buds. In severe cases, trees can show what is often misdiagnosed as zinc deficiency, with shoots emerging from the crown of the tree and at the apex of growing tips, with lots of barren buds along the main growing areas. Fruit will be squat in shape and tends to have poorer flavours and keeping qualities. Buds will emerge erratically and the risk of sunburn onto wood becomes more significant over the summer as leaf out is less than normal and altered pruning management strategies need to be considered. Flowers that do develop will often also have weakened pollen tubes, which impacts successful pollination. If you are using dormancy breakers, keep a close eye on how the season unfolds – at this stage, there will be no reason to apply these products until adequate chill is obtained.
When comparing the MIA, Riverland and Goulburn Valley regions, you can see how chill has been steadily increasing in the Goulburn Valley, whereas the other two areas are seeing constant interruptions in chill accumulation.
In previous years, one of the issues with lower-chill varieties was that if I had pruned them this early, they would be going into early bud burst as adequate chill would have been achieved.
While we have the rest of winter to accumulate chill, we are significantly behind where it would be regarded as ideal chilling conditions.
For the MIA, Sunraysia and Riverland regions, paying close attention to weather patterns over the next 8 weeks and implementing management strategies will be important. However, like all models, they become more reliable as the season progresses, as the data sets more accurately predict bud burst modelling.
Regards,
Shane Phillips | Head Chemist - Research & Development
E: shane.phillips@biocentral-labs.com
Stay connected and receive updates, resources and insights—subscribe to our newsletter today.
