Articles
TRAINING METHODS FOR INTENSIVE PRUNE ORCHARDS
Regular, high and early yields, fruit quality, low labour costs and high picking outputs are the main objectives.
In this respect both systems investigated seemed to be suitable.
The more extensive grown system of the Teller crown (shape of a plate) with a final height of 2.5 m was planted with 500 trees/ha.
The density planting with 1140 trees/ha was trained as Spindel trees.
The Spindel system comes slightly earlier into production attaining full yield in leaf 7 compared to the Teller crown in leaf 8. The moment of amortisation occurs in leaf 6 and is equal to both systems.
Up to leaf 7 the annuity of investment favours the extensive grown system, due to a higher investment for the density planting.
The labour demand to train a Spindel tree as well as picking expenses are higher compared to the Teller crown, due to the fact that with a tree height of 3 and more meters not all fruit can be picked from the bottom.
This results in higher production costs per kg harvested fruit.
The decision for or against a high density planting depends largely on the market value of the variety, specific factors like growing conditions, labour availability and acceptance of financial risk.