Abstract
The effects of fully mechanized pruning systems on physiology, vigor and yield of grapevines have been studied for more than forty years and are an interesting way to reduce production costs. Organic amending of vineyard soil is a way to increase vine productivity. Thus, this study aims to understand the effects of the interaction between these two practices, on vine growth and productivity. Two trial fields were implemented on Shiraz vineyards in 2 different wine regions. Mechanical hedge pruning was compared with hand spur pruning and four different organic amendments were tested: biochar; municipal solid waste compost; cattle manure; sewage sludge. Mechanical pruning and organic amendments, by themselves, did not significantly increase yield. However, the interaction between both factors reduced the impact of self-regulation mechanisms (budburst, bud fruitfulness and cluster weight) in mechanical pruning and successfully increased yield, without decreasing vegetative growth. The effects of mechanical pruning with the application of organic amendments to soil on yield is significant and, thereby, the choice of the organic amendment and its amount, must be done considering the destiny of produced grapes.
Highlights
The effects of fully mechanized pruning systems on physiology and yield of grapevines and on grapes and wines quality have been studied since the early 19700 s [1]
The budburst percentage was lower in mechanical pruning (MEC) (60%) when compared to manual pruning (MAN) (100%)
Mechanical pruning and the organic amendments had a positive effect in shoot and cluster number per vine
Summary
The effects of fully mechanized pruning systems on physiology and yield of grapevines and on grapes and wines quality have been studied since the early 19700 s [1]. Due to that, the plant autoregulation capacity, which is influenced among other factors by soil fertility, becomes the major regulator of yield and, grape and wine quality. Mechanized pruning systems induce a significant increase in bud load, which leads to compensation mechanisms that downregulate bud break [6], shoot fruitfulness [7] and, in a lesser extent, cluster weight [6,8]. The higher number of clusters per vine [4,8], usually increases yield [4], it does not always occur [8,9] due to the referred autoregulation mechanisms.
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