Promotion of gold kiwifruit 'Haegeum' (Actinidia chinensis Planch.) maturity using plastic house cultivation

Younsup Cho, Hyesung Cho, Moonyoung Park, Eunsik Kim, Donggeun Lim, Byeongjoon Jung
'Haegeum', a Korean gold kiwifruit, arrives at the critical hue angle (103°) for harvest earlier than 'Hort16A', which is a dominant gold kiwifruit in the market. However, some growers want to harvest even earlier with good internal colour for advanced shipping. In an attempt to promote earlier internal yellow colour expression of gold kiwifruit, 'Haegeum' vines were cultivated in a plastic vinyl house for 2 years and compared with control vines in field cultivation. Kiwifruit cultivated within a plastic house developed yellow internal flesh colour (hue angle 103°) 15 days earlier than the control. They also had increased dry matter content earlier while fruit firmness was similar compared with the control. The main cause of earlier yellow colour expression was attributed to the wider range of daily temperature than field grown vines. The average daily temperature difference was 15.3°C (max. 25.5°C) in the house and 11.4°C (max. 18.8°C) in the field. Cold storage of these earlier maturing fruits showed no negative impact on fruit quality for commercial sale. The growth of experimental vines was not affected in either year. In conclusion, our results show that gold kiwifruit could be harvested 15-20 days earlier under plastic house culture than in the field without any quality deterioration. This may bring better profit for producers from early marketing and extension of the gold kiwifruit marketing period.
Cho, Younsup, Cho, Hyesung, Park, Moonyoung, Kim, Eunsik, Lim, Donggeun and Jung, Byeongjoon (2016). Promotion of gold kiwifruit 'Haegeum' (Actinidia chinensis Planch.) maturity using plastic house cultivation. Acta Hortic. 1130, 345-350
DOI: 10.17660/ActaHortic.2016.1130.52
https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2016.1130.52
hue angle, dry matter, weight, early harvest, storage life
English

Acta Horticulturae