Shi, Biying. M.S., Purdue University, May 2015. Growth Parameters for 'Golden Delicious' Apple Trees (Malus × domestica Borkh.). Major Professor: Peter Hirst. High yield and high quality of tree fruit result from appropriate orchard design and management practices. This requires an accurate knowledge of vegetative growth, branching, and flowering processes of fruit trees. Tree development knowl...

the flowering phase of apple trees is the most critical step in relation with low temperatures and frost events. therefore, forecasting the time of flowering is important. if a model can predict the exact time of flowering, it would be feasible to care for flowers agianst late spring freezing (lsf). in this study, we evaluated three temperature-base chilling models namely: chilling hours (ch), ...

The plum curculio, Conotrachelus nenuphar (Herbst) (Coleoptera: Curculionidae), one of the most important pests of apple (Malus spp.) in eastern and central North America, historically has been managed in New England apple orchards by three full block insecticide applications. Efforts to reduce insecticide inputs against plum curculio include perimeter row sprays, particularly after petal fall,...

It’s the single most famous story of scientific discovery: in 1666, Isaac Newton was walking in his garden outside Cambridge, England he was avoiding the city because of the plague when he saw an apple fall from a tree. The fruit fell straight to the earth, as if tugged by an invisible force. (Subsequent versions of the story had the apple hitting Newton on the head.) This mundane observation l...

Significant Findings: 1. Apple leaf quality deteriorates with the season. We confirmed in multiple seasons that L. subjuncta larval development is prolonged and pupal weight is decreased on apple foliage as the season progresses. These data indicate the apple leaves are a relatively good food material for Lacanobia larvae early in the season but deteriorate in quality later in the season. Simil...

We show how an image can, in principle, be described by the tangles of the graph of its pixels. The tangle-tree theorem provides a nested set of separations that efficiently distinguish all the distinguishable tangles in a graph. This translates to a small data set from which the image can be reconstructed. The tangle duality theorem says that a graph either has a certainorder tangle or a tree-...

INTERNATIONAL DWARF FRUIT TREE ASSOCIATION Apple yield and fruit quality are the end result of myriad cultural practices (e.g., pruning, thinning, spraying), environmental inputs (e.g., light, carbon dioxide, water, nutrient supply) and physiological processes (e.g., leaf area development, light interception, photosynthesis, respiration). All of them are truly essential contributors to fruit pr...

(1) Background: Since early yield prediction is relevant for resource requirements of harvesting and marketing in the whole fruit industry, this paper presents a new approach of using image analysis and tree canopy features to predict early yield with artificial neural networks (ANN); (2) Methods: Two back propagation neural network (BPNN) models were developed for the early period after natura...

orchard intensification is motivated by the desire to produce fruit early in the life of the orchard to rapidly recover establishment costs. intensification is possible using dwarfing rootstocks that control tree size, induce early cropping and produce large quantities of fruit compared to the amount of wood produced. therefore, this study attempts to compare some yield and fruit properties of ...