ISHS Acta Horticulturae 903: IX International Symposium on Integrating Canopy, Rootstock and Environmental Physiology in Orchard Systems
CHANGING CONCEPTS OF EFFICIENCY IN ORCHARD SYSTEMS |
| Author: | J.W. Palmer |
| Keywords: | Malus × domestica, sustainability, light use efficiency, harvest index, carbon footprint, LCA |
| DOI: | 10.17660/ActaHortic.2011.903.1 |
| Abstract:
Looking back over the symposia organised by the Orchard and Plantation Systems Working Group from 1976, we have been seeking to improve the efficiency of carbon acquisition and distribution to the fruit for each hectare of orchard land, primarily by our choice of rootstocks, training systems, tree quality etc. Issues such as light use efficiency and harvest index have featured prominently, as we have sought to understand and compare different systems of production for our perennial fruit crops. These concepts have proven to be very useful and robust and will continue to guide our future thinking, as they describe the basic physiological processes. We have also considered issues of sustainability, which initially focused on issues such as Integrated Fruit Production (IFP) to reduce chemical pesticide use and on occasions mechanisation to improve economic sustainability. Currently, however, we are being forced to look at not only the whole system within the orchard (trees, soil, understorey, windbreaks) but also the energy costs and carbon footprint of our production and distribution systems – the orchard system in a much wider dimension. These pressures are coming from consumers, retailers and governments, as they seek to respond to global warming and “peak oil”. What we are seeing is an ever-widening horizon of the orchard system. The relevance of, for example, light use efficiency is as important today as it was back in the 1970s, but we now have to add other measures of efficiency in addition to those we have worked with historically. In many ways the need for whole plant physiology has never been more important than today, as we seek to understand the carbon flows within the orchard. As we have sought to tackle our more limited horizon of the “orchard system puzzle” with scientific rigour, we now need to understand the whole system of our production cycle with equal rigour. Future advances are likely to involve step changes and paradigm shifts as profoundly transformational as those experienced with intensive planting systems technologies implemented in the past 30-40 years. | |
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