DEVELOPMENTS IN HIGH DENSITY SWEET CHERRY PRUNING AND TRAINING SYSTEMS AROUND THE WORLD

The success of high density plantings with apple over the last 40 years has stimulated sweet cherry growers to plant higher and higher tree densities. In contrast to the apple story, the development of high density cherry management systems was done initially with vigorous, non-precocious rootstocks. More recently, the development of dwarfing and semi-dwarfing precocious cherry rootstocks has greatly stimulated high density sweet cherry production. This has been accompanied by the development of numerous systems of planting, pruning and training cherry trees. The significant advances in the last 10 years prompted us to organize a workshop on high density cherry systems at the International Horticulture Congress in August 2002 in Toronto, Canada. This workshop focused on the practical aspects of the leading cherry planting systems from around the world, with the goal of understanding the common fundamental elements of all successful planting systems. The papers from this workshop show how growers around the world are integrating the factors of variety, rootstock, spacing and training system with their climate, soil type, and management ability to be successful with many different systems. It is clear from the different approaches used around the world that successful integration of the puzzle pieces into high density orchards can lead to high early yields, high sustained yields and excellent fruit quality with any one of several orchard planting systems.