Hello, sorry for the delay. Yes, correct. Crop load influenced fruit weight notwithstanding ReTain. Fruits left on tree at harvest were more numerous and larger when treated with Retain. Fruits were up to 56g larger (148g vs 92g) depending on the specifics of the ReTain application.
What I also found interesting was that the average fruit pressure of retain treated fruit significantly dropped for fruit left on the trees. As if the fruit stuck to the tree with Retain, and continued to grow but got softer. The Brix index was also influenced by the number of fruits on the tree: lower Brix on trees with more fruit. Retain also increased sugar content. Not much else to report. I’m not usually into physiology. This was a “accidental” project for us! Vincent On 14janv., 2014, at 16:41, David Kollas <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Vincent: As I understand your most recent explanation, both the untreated and the ReTain-treated trees produced greater fruit size at harvest if they were borne on trees most heavily-set at start of experiment. And that the ReTain treated trees showed a greater size/initial number of fruit than did the untreated. If the difference in fruit size for treated versus untreated is small, I would not be much bothered by it. Can you tell us how much different they were? David Kollas On Jan 14, 2014, at 12:26 PM, Vincent Philion <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Hello! Thank you all for your input! I did not explain why I was looking at drop and fruit size: it was an experiment on the use of ReTain. In the end I’m not sure I can pinpoint the reason this increased fruit size on trees with more apples (notwithstanding ReTain), but your input underlined that a number of variables can be involved! I liked Duane’s idea. If you’re curious, the report will read: ReTain Treatments significantly increased harvested McIntosh yield as compared to the control (p<0.0001). Average fruit size at harvest was proportional to the total number of fruits on the trees present at the start of the experiment (p=0.01) and fruits treated with ReTain were larger than in the control (p=0.02). The effect of ReTain on harvest was expected (drop prevention) but the effect on fruit size was undetectable if the model was not adjusted to the initial crop load (thus my question) So the next question is now: why are ReTain treated fruits bigger than untreated fruit at harvest? bye for now, Vincent On 14janv., 2014, at 10:06, Duane Greene <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: _______________________________________________ apple-crop mailing list [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> http://virtualorchard.net/mailman/listinfo/apple-crop
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