Mechanical thinning effects studied

摘要

Mechanical thinning can damage spurs and leaf tissue as well as flowers. Mechanical thinning looks like a promising technique for reducing the amount of labor-intensive hand thinning required in order to grow a good crop of nice-sized apples.That's the conclusion reached by a team of researchers from around the country who worked on a major project to evaluate mechanical thinning. For their project, they tested a couple of thinning machines—the Darwin and the Uni Bonn string thinners, bothof which originated in Europe.