Cherry Times offers its readers the reports on cherry rootstocks presented at the Macfrut 2024 International Rootstock Symposium.
In stone fruit species, such as peach, cherry, apricot and plum labour requirement is important ranging from 45% to 71% of the total cost of production. In this sense, combining size controlling rootstocks as Rootpac® series, Isthara® and others in peach and plum, or Gisela® and Corette® series in cherry, with intensive bidimensional training systems based on central axis or bi axis resulted in earlier and higher yields, compared with the traditional open vase associated with vigorous rootstocks.
The association of these intensive orchards with bidimensional canopies and good accessibility to canopy by labour and machines, is essential to reduce the cost of production. These canopies allow an efficient use of labour and mechanization. Regarding peach, under Ebro Valley (Spain) conditions, the reduction on total cost of production ranged from 15% to 20% and the harvest rate increased by 41%, enhancing also fruit quality due to better light distribution within the tree canopy.
In cherry the increase of harvest rate increased by 72% when UFO was compared with the traditional open center. With European and Japanese varieties, intensification by using RootpacR20 rootstock and super high density plantings (SHD), allowed to get more than 40 t ha-1 in the third year in Ebro Valley (Spain).
Image 1: Ignasi Iglesias.
With ‘Agen’ European plum, using the same rootstock, under Chilean conditions training trees in a small hedge (SHD) allowed the full mechanization of the harvest by using over-the-row harvester or pedestrian harvest for the needs of fresh market. In this case, manual harvest efficiency increased by 49% compared with the traditional open vase.
In all species, the use of size controlling rootstocks offers different options to growers when selecting the training systems concerning skilled labour requirements to train the trees in the first years.
Thus, an increase was recorded when the number of axes increased from central axis to bi-, tri- and multi-axes. Furthermore, all these planar canopies were better adapted to the application of precision technologies based on artificial vision (AV) for monitoring pest and diseases, neural network and AV for fruit counting, yield forecasting and robotic harvesting.
Download the full report here
Download the presentation here
Ignasi Iglesias and Ramon Botet
Agromillora Catalana Group, Spain
iiglesias@agromillora.com
28 Sep 2023
On Thursday, 14 September, growers of different cherry varieties were invited by ANA Chile® to the 4th EXPOCerezo 2023, where participants were able to learn about the advances in the technical knowledge of varieties to obtain the best fruit potential and share their experiences.
13 Jun 2025
Alegra cherries, grown by 3,800 farmers over 400 hectares in Emilia-Romagna, stand out for their quality, freshness, and tech-driven selection. The cooperative model and climate shields make Vignola’s IGP a resilient and sustainable excellence in the fruit sector.
29 Jun 2026
I bioreattori SETISTM migliorano crescita, vigore e radicazione dei portinnesti di ciliegio dolce Prunus avium e Gisela 6. Lo studio evidenzia vantaggi produttivi e sfide legate a iperidricità, genotipo e protocolli di micropropagazione per vivai più efficienti.
29 Jun 2026
In Germany, per capita consumption of cherries and sour cherries fell to 1.7 kg in 2025, while national production rose 33% thanks to favorable weather. Spain, Greece and Italy remain key suppliers, supporting both fresh fruit sales and industrial processing.
