VCHERRY - an interactive growth, training and fruiting model to simulate sweet cherry tree development, yield and fruit size.

摘要

In the past decade, worldwide sweet cherry (Prunus avium L.) orchard plantation has increased at a rate perhaps greater than any other temperate tree fruit. New dwarfing, precocious rootstocks, which alter tree size and productivity dramatically, require novel management strategies to avoid serious problems with excessive cropping, insufficient vegetative growth and poor fruit quality. Since sweet cherry flowers primarily on 2-year- and older wood, pruning decisions have both long- and short-term consequences for canopy development, yields, fruit quality and economic sustainability. The objective of the Virtual Cherry (VCHERRY) project has been to synthesize cherry research on new rootstocks, varieties, tree architecture, training systems and cropping physiology for development of a computer program to (1) simulate multi-season tree development based on interactive orchard pruning and training decisions, and (2) predict consequences with respect to yields and fruit size. Written in C++, VCHERRY growth and fruiting simulations are based on the formation and compilation of individual meristems, each of which possesses a visual representation, an internal state governing its behavior and a set of rules for its development and interaction with other nodes as the complexity of the system increases. Meristem relational rules are defined by genotype, tree architecture, growth algorithms and experimental cropping data. Currently, VCHERRY has a main visual display window for tree growth plus eight selectable user interface windows to set growth parameters, manipulate views, output data, etc. Growth and fruiting simulations can be conducted for any training system or set of decisions, and saved to text, picture (JPEG) or movie files (QuickTimeTM) for comparisons, demonstrations or digital file-sharing. These features, which continue to be refined, are designed to be useful to orchard managers, consultants or extension agents and scientists.