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Plant sciences, sustainable farming systems and food quality
RESEARCH ARTICLE

Yield determination in olive hedgerow orchards. II. Analysis of radiation and fruiting profiles

David J. Connor A B , Ana Centeno A and María Gómez-del-Campo A C
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A Dpto. Producción Vegetal: Fitotecnia, AgSystems Research Group, Ciudad Universitaria sn. 28040 Madrid, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain.

B Melbourne School of Land and Environment. The University of Melbourne, Vic. 3010, Australia.

C Corresponding author. Email: maria.gomezdelcampo@upm.es

Crop and Pasture Science 60(5) 443-452 https://doi.org/10.1071/CP08253
Submitted: 1 August 2008  Accepted: 6 February 2009   Published: 14 May 2009

Abstract

Profiles of fruit density, fruit size, and oil content were measured on 12 occasions in 7 olive orchards in Spain and 2 in Australia. Orchard structure varied widely. Height ranged from 2.0 to 5.5 m, row spacing from 3 to 6 m, and canopy width from 0.7 to 3 m. Most orchards were oriented north–south (N–S) but one in Spain was oriented close to east–west (E–W) (20° NE–SW). All orchards in Spain were cv. Arbequina, and in Australia they were cvv. Barnea and Picual. Analyses with a model of interception and transmission that estimated interception by individual sides of hedgerows revealed that fruit size and oil content were strongly related to intercepted radiation during the month before harvest across all orchards. Relationships were also evident between fruit density and interception but varied among orchards and years, indicating the importance of other environmental and probably physiological effects. In N–S orchards of cv. Arbequina, average fruit size and oil content increased linearly from 0.40 g (dry weight) to 0.72 g, and from 36 to 49% (of dry weight), as daily intercepted PAR increased from 6 to 25 mol/m2 (15–60% of horizontally incident radiation). The general principles of response extended to E–W orchards. There, it was shown that generally large fruit with high oil content on S sides was consistent with the plateau responses to radiation evident in the more extensive N–S data. On the N side, however, and accounting for transmission through the hedgerow, both fruit size and oil content were greater than in positions intercepting equivalent radiation in N–S orchards. Examples are provided of the utility of responses of fruit density, size, and oil content in establishing combinations of row height, row width, and row distance to improve or maintain productivity in some of the orchards included in the study.

Additional keywords: Olea europaea L., radiation model, fruit number, oil content, fruit size.


Acknowledgments

We express our gratitude to Prof. Diego Barranco from Universidad de Córdoba for use of oil measurement equipment, and Dr Leandro Ravetti of Modern Olives, Lara, Victoria, Australia, for the measurements made on orchards of cvv. Picual and Barnea at Boundary Bend, Victoria, Australia. We gratefully acknowledge Jacinto Cabetas from El Carpio de Tajo and Antonio Capitán from Écija for access to olive orchards where this research was conducted.


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Appendix 1.  Structure and yield profiles (means of two faces) of N–S orchards in Spain and Australia
Additional data for Orchards 9 and 10 are available in Gómez-del-Campo et al. (2009, this issue)
Click to zoom



Appendix 2.  Structure and yield profiles of E–W orchards in Spain
Additional detail is available in Gómez-del-Campo et al. (2009, this issue)
Click to zoom