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Morning All,
A very cold few weeks has put the chill graph in an upward spiral.
If the upcoming forecast is to be believed we should receive negative chill over the next weekend with Saturday being the forecast day of negative chill with some locations extending into Sunday before the weather goes into a more typical winter pattern.
We are approaching the stage where the lower chill varieties will show some woolly bud in the next burst of warm weather and the forecast for the middle of July is for warm weather on top of the dry finish in autumn one could reasonably expect to see some early bud movement. For almonds with the 350-700 chill hour requirement and Independence with around 400 chill hour requirements.
For producers wanting to delay bud burst if the conditions are favourable to bud activity cooling polymer applications in the mid-July period (again subject to weather conditions at this time) can be useful inholding buds in a dormancy phase. One of the issues with early bud movement (or the false break) is that the tree is neither active or dormant and this results in quite poor plant growth and development later in the season.
Griffith is beginning to catch up, but it is still the anomaly in terms of chill accumulation as this region normally has the highest chill accumulation of the sites that I am monitoring.
Regards,
Shane Phillips | Head Chemist - Research & Development
E: shane.phillips@biocentral-labs.com
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