Volume 54 Number 3 Article 23
Year 2000 Month 7
Title: A Crop Estimation Technique for Highbush Blueberries
Authors: J.F. Hancock, P. Callow, R. Keesler, D. Prince, and B. Bordelon
Abstract:
This report describes our attempts to develop yield prediction methods for 'Bluecrop' and 'Jersey'
highbush blueberries.
Considerable variability was observed across years in number of flower buds per
shoot, fruit set, individual fruit weight, cane diameter and number of laterals per cane.
However, there
was a significant association between the weight of green fruit at the second stage of development and
ripe fruit weight at harvest.
Among five different sampling strategies, tedious counting of all the fruit in
individual bushes was most tightly correlated with individual bush yields, but the quickest estimate,
based on counting the number of fruit within a 625 cm2 surface (hoop counts), was also significantly
associated.
Hoop counts were used to estimate yields on growers fields when the bushes were at bloom,
the fruit were in stage II of development, and 30% of the fruit were ripe.
The estimates made at the stage
II and 30% ripe stages were significantly associated with actual yields, but were 15-40% high depending on developmental stage and cultivar.
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