Articles
LABOUR DEMAND AND EXPECTED RETURNS BY DIFFERENT TREE TRAINING FORMS AND PLANTING DENSITIES IN SWEET CHERRY ORCHARDS
The main objectives of a modern sweet cherry orchard are regular, high and early yields, excellent fruit quality, high picking outputs and low labour costs.
In 1995 an experiment was established in the Bodensee region with two different plant densities (600 and 1714 trees per hectare) and two training systems (spindle and slender spindle) to three commercially important cultivars (‘Schneiders’, ‘Kordia’, ‘Regina’) on rootstock Gisela 5.
The experimental trees were precocious; yields varied between 1.0 to 2.0 kg per tree in the 2nd leaf and between 4.1 to 5.9 kg in the 3rd leaf for both training systems.
The training of slender spindle trees required less labour than the training of trees in the spindle form.
The accumulated hours of tree forming during leaf 1 to 3 were 90/ha for the low density system; an additional 180 hours/ha were required for the high density orchard.
The high density orchard is estimated to attain full yield in leaf 5, the lower density in leaf 7. Break even occurs between leaf 5 and 6. Up to leaf 4 the annuity of investment (= cash flow) favours the extensive grown system, due to the lower investment costs.
Once break even is attained, the annual cash flow rates of the slender spindle system indicate that this system is the most profitable due to less picking costs per kg fruit and higher yield expectations.