Projects
Martin Jensen , Antonios Petridis , Majken Pagter , Maya Bojesen , Thomas Skovgaard , Jan Jager & Henning Jensen
Danish fruit and berry growers experience a significant loss of fruit production due to spring frosts that kill flower buds. Global warming induces earlier flowering and earlier loss of frost tolerance in buds, while the last day of spring frost has not become correspondingly earlier. This means an even greater risk of frost damage in Danish orchards in the future, which both threatens economic competitiveness and affects the environmental footprint.
The purpose of this project is to test and develop new and innovative solutions to protect flowers against spring frost with the aim of reducing frost damage and achieving higher and stable fruit yields and thus lowering the environmental footprint per fruit produced. Technologies being tested include testing new products that may biochemically or biophysically help protect flower buds from frost through delayed flowering or induced higher frost hardiness in buds. In addition, new fog systems that require much less water than traditional frost protection by irrigation will be tested. The possibility of utilizing varietal differences and rootstocks to reduce frost damage will be investigated. The importance of obtaining more precise information on microclimate will be investigated and results used to improve the prediction of damage risk and thus recommend the most economical and relevant tool for frost protection in orchards. Finally, measurements of physiological and biochemical changes in flower buds from the experiments will be used to develop more precise applied biological indicators of frost sensitivity to improve spring frost forecasting. Apples will be the main model, but pears and sweet cherries are also included
Financing: Projektet er støttet af: GUDP, Aarhus Universitet, Ålborg Universitet, Hortiadvice, Kærsbo frugtplantage og Egeby Frugtplantage.Description
01/08-2023 → 31/07-2027
