Abstract
Hedgerow orchard is an olive growing system where trees are planted at a super high-density higher than 20-fold (i.e., 1200–2500 trees ha−1) compared to the traditional density of olive orchards (usually 50 to 160 trees ha−1). It is dominating a great proportion of new plantations because harvesting can be fully mechanized, it is early bearing and has a relatively constant high productivity. However, there are a limited number of cultivars with sufficiently low vigour to be suitable for such plantation densities. For that reason, a set of low vigour cultivars and breeding selections has been used in a field experiment as rootstocks for reducing the vigour of “Picual”, the most frequent cultivar planted in Spain. Tree vigour was characterized by measuring crown height, projected and side areas, and volume through the analysis of photogrammetric point clouds created from images acquired with an unmanned aerial vehicle. A significant reduction of the ‘Picual’ vigour was observed in most of the rootstocks tested, with canopy volume reduced up to one half. High variability on vigour, first harvesting and their relative relationship was observed between the different rootstocks used. This indicates there might be enough genetic variability to perform breeding selection for dwarfing rootstocks on ‘Picual’ olive cultivar.
Highlights
Olive (Olea europaea L.) is the most widespread tree fruit planted in the Mediterranean basin
The main drawback of this growing system is that super high-density planting leads to the need for low vigour cultivars with good productivity level; there is a scarcity of varieties with these characteristics
The analysis was applied to the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and the field data, except for transversal area that was not estimated from field data
Summary
Olive (Olea europaea L.) is the most widespread tree fruit planted in the Mediterranean basin. Few attempts have been made to develop low vigour cultivars adapted to this cropping system, such as ‘Askal’ in Israel (Lavee et al, 2003) or ‘Sikitita’ in Spain (Rallo et al, 2008) This shortage is mainly due to the high heterozygosity of this species, which produces a high variability on the breeding crosses making it difficult to find a genotype having all the desirable traits; and to the extended juvenile period of olives that makes the breeding selection process very long. These factors have hampered the obtaining of new cultivars through the combination of good adaptation to super-high density with other traits such as high oil quality or resistance to pests and diseases
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