"The super millionaire fruits of the Alma Mater": this is how Corriere della Sera headlined years ago when announcing the results obtained by researchers from the Department of Agri-food Sciences and Technologies of the University of Bologna on the cherry tree genetic improvement project: the seven Sweet® sisters, the new varieties named after the children or loved ones of their inventors.
A team led by Stefano Lugli who, starting from old indigenous varieties, the famous Duroni di Vignola, bearers of valuable traits such as sweetness, texture and aroma, has been able to combine these virtues with others, such as beauty, size and productivity, taking them from varieties of American origin.
Below, the report by Bettina Riedel, variety manager of UNIBO, presented at the seminar on cherry variety innovation at Macfrut 2023. Precisely at Macfrut, ten years ago, the Sweet® varieties made their debut winning, among others, the Oscar prize for innovation.
27 Jun 2023
The scientific research we present today was conducted in Sichuan Province (China). Photosynthetic characteristics, physiology and biochemistry of the fruits were analyzed, as well as fruit transcriptome.
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Climate variability in high-elevation areas of Utah is affecting sour cherry production, raising double fruit risk and challenging phenological models. The study defines the critical post-harvest window and assesses the reliability of leading bloom prediction systems.
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YOLO-CY detects sweet cherry cracks with high accuracy and speed. Tested on 3,662 images, the model achieved 94.88% mAP50 and processed 125 frames per second. Further validation across varieties, sorting lines and operating conditions is still needed before rollout.
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