Abstract
There is a growing interest in precision viticulture with the development of global positioning system and geographical information system technologies. Limited information is available on spatial variation of bud behavior and its possible association with soil properties. The objective of this study was to investigate spatial variability of bud burst percentage and its association with soil properties based on 2-year experiments at a vineyard of arid northwest China. Geostatistical approach was used to describe the spatial variation in bud burst percentage within the vineyard. Partial least square regressions (PLSRs) of bud burst percentage with soil properties were used to evaluate the contribution of soil properties to overall spatial variability in bud burst percentage for the high, medium and low bud burst percentage groups. Within the vineyard, the coefficient of variation (CV) of bud burst percentage was 20% and 15% for 2012 and 2013 respectively. Bud burst percentage within the vineyard showed moderate spatial variability, and the overall spatial pattern of bud burst percentage was similar between the two years. Soil properties alone explained 31% and 37% of the total spatial variation respectively for the low group of 2012 and 2013, and 16% and 24% for the high group of 2012 and 2013 respectively. For the low group, the fraction of variations explained by soil properties was found similar between the two years, while there was substantial difference for the high group. The findings are expected to lay a good foundation for developing remedy measures in the areas with low bud burst percentage, thus in turn improving the overall grape yield and quality.
Highlights
Grapevine (Vitis spp.) is one of the most cultivated crops in the temperate regions of 30°and 50°latitude [1] and vineyard is inherently spatially heterogeneous due to highly variable soil properties within a field
Elgendy et al [12] investigated the effects of foliar spraying of gibberellic acid and/or forchlorfenuron on bud burst percentages and fruitful buds of Thompson Seedless grape based on three-year experiments
Soil properties in the field showed weak to moderate variability in the field, with the highest coefficient of variation (CV) around 34.6% for total phosphorus (TP) and sand content, and the lowest CV of 4 and 7% for bulk density and TK, respectively
Summary
Grapevine (Vitis spp.) is one of the most cultivated crops in the temperate regions of 30°and 50°latitude [1] and vineyard is inherently spatially heterogeneous due to highly variable soil properties within a field. Spatial variability in grape yield and berry composition at a field scale and their potential association with soil and topographic properties have been widely investigated. Tisseyre et al [5] studied the temporal stability of spatial variability in several vine parameters including pruning weight, yield, canopy size, sugar, total titrable acidity, and pH based on consecutive 7-year field experiments. Bramley et al [8] attempted to build the associations between vineyard soil properties with grape or wine attributes and found that high yield zone tended to have relatively higher level of soil extractable Fe. Previous studies have reported that grape yield was determined mostly by the bunch number per vine and the berry number per bunch, which were shown to account for 60% and 30% of seasonal yield variation respectively [9,10,11]. Guilpart et al [9] examined the association of bud fertility (number of bunches per shoot) with soil water status during different time period of the current and the previous season for different irrigation and nitrogen treatments
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