Economic aspects of different fruit set density of 'Fuji' apples

Abstract

The establishment of an adequated method for apple fruit thinning in Brazil is of great importance under the economic point of view. How many fruits to keep on the trees is an unknown aspect that should be urgently defined. In the presence of a strong thinning we will have better fruit sizes and better prices. On the other hand a light fruit thinning allows us to get better crop for that season. An experiment was designed to study the effects of fruit thinning intensity (fruit/m²) on the growers profit. It was conduced during the seasons of 87/88, 88/89 and 89/90 on the apple cultivar Fuji, in Santa Catarina, Brazil. At harvest, the fruits were on classified different classes of size. Using Regression Analyses the results obtained for each class of fruit size were correlated with the thinning intensity. The income was calculated for each different croping weight. The results obtained showed that it is possible, on the economic point of view, to increase the density of fruits currently practiced by growers in southern Brazil.