A new technology for apricot frost disaster prevention

Plant frost damage is one of the major natural disasters in the world in the field of agriculture, especially in the production of fruits such as apricots, plums, pears, cherries, grapes, and walnuts, causing serious economic losses. The occurrence of late frosts presents a complex problem, affected by strong cold air flow, intense radiation cooling, and other factors, making it difficult to prevent or control it. Thus, many frost-prevention technologies have failed worldwide. To develop a traditional Chinese frost-prevention technology (according to the weather forecast or experience of weather and fuel fumes), we developed an instrument that can forecast the temperature accurately (±0.1°C) and a chemical fuel block that can increase the temperature to prevent frost. The Chinese utility model patent ZL2006 2 0128137.6 was applied to a portable automatic frost prevention alarm device for field temperature monitoring and alarm, while Chinese invention patent ZL2013 1 0003313.8 was applied to the burning device (sawdust fuel block and briquette) to improve orchard temperature during frost. The results showed the following: the performance of the alarm device was stable, and it could measure the temperature of the apricot continuously and accurately; the composite fuel block released a large amount of smoke, reducing visibility; 16 fuel points 667 m^-2 could increase apricot temperature by 1.5-2.0°C, and 25 fuel points 667 m^-2 could increase apricot temperature by 2.0-3.0°C, which in turn could reduce the freezing rate of the flower, and thus could effectively prevent frost damage.