Global Climate Change on a Micro Scale: High Tunnel Systems for Sweet Cherry Production

摘要

The fruiting goals were to produce premium quality fresh market sweet cherries; reduce fruit defects such as cracking, bird damage, wind damage, and rots; and achieve adequate yields while containing the tree canopy within the confines of the tunnel.With talk of global climate change all the rage these days, let us focus on what fruit growers can do to manage, or actually even impose, climate change on an orchard scale. "High tunnels" are plastic-covered steel hoop structures usually made with fewermaterial inputs than true greenhouses, therefore providing increased control of certain climatic factors at a lower cost. They may be standalone tunnels or multiple connected tunnels (which usually do not have the structural rigidity to withstand wintersnow loads), and usually they are managed manually rather than electronically.