The cherry tree is one of the fruit crops with the highest added value and the strongest commercial prospects; at the same time, however, it continues to depend on production systems that require a large amount of labor and must adapt to new climatic conditions linked to climate change.
In Spain, where the area planted with cherry trees is approaching 29,000 hectares and average annual production stands at around 121,000 tonnes, labor now accounts for more than 65% of production costs and can exceed 1,200 hours per hectare per year.
“Reducing this dependence means, among other things, rethinking the architecture of orchards, moving cherry production toward intensive systems and more two-dimensional canopies that allow a greater number of operations to be carried out from the ground and that can progressively integrate mechanization, digitalization and even robotics.
To move in this direction, however, it is essential to have rootstocks capable of adequately controlling vigor,” explains Ignasi Iglesias, technical director of Agromillora Group.
“With this objective in mind, we have added the Corette® series to our portfolio, a new rootstock genetics that Agromillora will present at Fruit Attraction 2026 and which is currently undergoing pre-commercial evaluation within an extensive European network, following several years of trials aimed at determining whether the performance originally observed in the United States can be replicated under production conditions that differ considerably in terms of soil and climate.”
“Until now, when talking about low-vigor genetics for cherry trees, the international benchmarks have been GiSelA® 5 and GiSelA® 6, but in warm areas characterized by calcareous soils and alkaline pH, their performance presents certain limitations, such as low vigor and low productivity,” explains Iglesias.
“For this reason, research is focusing on materials capable of maintaining the production advantages of dwarfing rootstocks while at the same time offering better adaptability to the typical conditions of Southern Europe.”
The Corette® series consists of five rootstocks, Cass, Clare, Clinton, Crawford and Lake, originating from the Michigan State University program and originally selected in different counties in Oregon from different interspecific crosses of Prunus.
In some cases, they have a genetic background that shares P. cerasus with materials used in benchmark rootstocks such as GiSelA®.
Agromillora holds an exclusive license for the testing of this genetics in Europe.
“The results previously obtained in the United States had already indicated low-vigor trees, generally in the GiSelA® 5 range or even below, combined with very rapid entry into production, high productivity and good adaptability to high- or very-high-density orchards.
Some materials also showed interesting characteristics under warm climatic conditions and in alkaline or calcareous soils.”
“Before considering their commercial development in Europe, however, Agromillora decided to verify these characteristics directly in the field, importing the plant material from the United States, propagating it in vitro and subsequently creating a network of trials to observe its performance under different combinations of soil, climate, cultivar and training system.”
“The evaluation began on a pre-commercial scale in Spain in 2023, with orchards in Mequinenza, in the province of Zaragoza; Albalate de Cinca, in the province of Huesca; and Cabrero, in the Jerte Valley, Extremadura.
Three Italian locations were subsequently added, together with an extensive trial network involving institutes and research centers belonging to EUFRIN, with trials distributed across 18 European countries.”
The vigor control provided by this type of genetics makes it possible to move away from traditional planting spacings associated with large trees and transition toward much narrower systems, with central leaders and canopies that concentrate production along a more accessible fruiting wall, similar to what is already used in other species such as apple and pear trees.
In the European trials on Corette, central leader training systems are used, with reference spacings of 3 x 0.5 meters and, in some cases, 3.2 x 0.7 meters.
Different cultivars are used depending on the ripening period and the conditions of each area, including Nimba®, Santina®, Sweet Aryana®, Sweet Sareta®, Regina, Kordia and Sweet Valina®.
As Iglesias explains, this transformation makes it possible to establish orchards in which pruning, thinning and harvesting can be carried out more efficiently, reducing movement and work at height while creating an architecture that, in the future, may also be more compatible with mechanized and automated solutions.
The results obtained so far must nevertheless be considered preliminary, since the evaluation network is still active.
The first Spanish trials, however, have confirmed several of the characteristics that had generated interest in this genetics in the United States.
The adaptation observed so far has in fact been satisfactory for some of the rootstocks evaluated, both under the very warm conditions and in the calcareous soils of the Ebro Valley and in the neutral-pH soils of the Jerte Valley.
The compatibility between rootstock and cultivar has also been good across all the materials studied.
“One of the figures that has attracted the most attention concerns early productivity, as by the third year yields exceeded 14 tonnes per hectare with cultivars such as Sweet Aryana® and Sweet Sareta®.
According to the results available from Agromillora, these figures “had not previously been achieved in comparable trials conducted with GiSelA® 5 or GiSelA® 6 in the Ebro Valley.”
The reduction in vigor could also have another application that is beginning to attract interest among some growers: cherry cultivation inside greenhouses and other protected structures.
Greenhouse cherry production is mainly used to bring the harvest date forward and access the earliest market windows of the season.
A fully protected structure can, however, also provide additional protection against some of the risks that are of greatest concern to growers in the weeks leading up to harvest, including rainfall associated with cracking and the risk of hail.
“There are already examples of protected production in areas such as Catalonia, Aragon, Valencia and Alicante, although working with vigorous rootstocks such as Adara greatly complicates management inside the structure and may even make it necessary to use growth regulators.
A less vigorous genetics could instead offer a more agronomically balanced alternative,” stresses Iglesias.
“Although today the vast majority of European cherry trees continue to be grown in open fields, reduced-vigor rootstocks could facilitate the introduction of the crop into certain protected agriculture projects, particularly when the economic objective is to bring the harvest forward and protect a fruit whose value can be extraordinarily high during the first weeks of marketing.
For this reason, the potential adaptability of Corette® to greenhouse cultivation represents one of the research areas of greatest interest.”
There is, however, another challenge that is set to profoundly transform cherry production over the coming decades: rising temperatures associated with climate change.
“The cherry tree must meet a certain chilling requirement during winter in order to properly complete its vegetative and productive cycle.
The reduction in chilling hours is already becoming a limiting factor in some producing regions of Chile, Spain and Italy and, in all likelihood, will become increasingly important both in Southern Europe and in other fruit-growing regions of the world.”
“Breeding programs have already successfully introduced cultivars with lower winter chilling requirements, while work on rootstocks is also moving in the same direction.
Agromillora is in fact evaluating, together with Ibergen, five pre-selections of cherry material specifically aimed at lower winter chilling requirements.
These materials are currently under study in Spain and will soon also be evaluated in countries such as Brazil, Peru and Chile.”
“The transformation envisaged for cherry production points toward a new orchard concept, in which genetics, planting density, tree architecture, crop protection and climate adaptation will have to evolve together in order to continue producing high-quality cherries in a scenario characterized by continuous technological development.
Agromillora aims to support this transformation with new rootstock solutions adapted to the needs of the production sector in the context of climate change.”
Image source: Agromillora
Source: FreshPlaza
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