Soil management in organic fruit growing

In the EU-standards you will find a period of three years for converting your orchard from conventional into organic. But conversion of your way of thinking about the orchard system and conversion of your root system and soil will take double time. The focus must change from curative to preventive. Production, growth regulation, fertilisation, undergrowth, weed control and water management all come together in the overall soil management

Growth and differentiation: Life processes in crops

This booklet discusses two basic life processes in nature:growth and differentiation.It uses the examples of apples,carrots and wheat to illustrate how growers can recognize these processes and can take practical measures to correct the balance between them in order to optimize the quality of their products.Thinking in growth and differentiation has proved valuable in the support,offered to growers by the Louis Bolk Instituut. It also speculates about the possible significance of these processes for human health

Annual report 2002 LBI organic fruit growing research

Overview of projects, project results, funding bodies and partners in 2002 and plans for 2003 Including: SOIL MANAGEMENT * Evaluation of leaf analysis in organic fruit growing as a tool for measuring the uptake of nutrients: Consultants and researchers exchanged practical experiences and the LBI hopes to work with target values. * Impact of sulphur stress: The fruit quality seemed to be better in the reduced sulphur treatment (27 kg /ha instead of 60 kg /ha after flowering). * Fertilisation: In a late summer fertilisation trial with Elstar, trees fertilised late summer/autumn have a higher nitrogen content in the bud the following spring. And fertilising just before winter leads to increased growth of weeds in the next season. * Ground cover: The key to white clover undergrowth is to ‘do it properly or not at all’. It is difficult for an organic grower to restore undergrowth which has been invaded by grasses to bare earth. Undergrowth is definitely not the answer for fruit growers who have any difficulty with mechanical weeding. The management of ground cover requires at least as much mechanisation as the bare tree strip. REGULATING GROWTH AND CROP * Steps to counter biennialism in Elstar: A trial was set up at three orchards combining various measures: thinning or not thinning with two or three applications of lime sulphur, adapted pruning, 3 levels of fruit bearing (30, 40, 50 tonne/ha) and early or late manual thinning. This trial should demonstrate the relative significance of the various measures. Flowering will be evaluated in the spring of 2003. * Fruiting spur pruning in Elstar: To obtain better insight into the effect of different pruning methods three pruning treatments were used: standard pruning, removal of an extra large amount of fruiting spurs, and removal of extra fruiting spurs but sparing smooth one-year-old shoots. The production of the trees has been estimated and the blossom will be evaluated in the spring of 2003. * Effect of thinning times, fertilisation and bearing on regularity of production and fruit quality in Elstar: Ripening was delayed by the high nitrogen dose and associated higher acid content. Despite the late ripening the firmness was still lower, the calcium content lower and the nitrogen content higher. All three factors pro- duce a clear deterioration in quality. On the other hand, the sugar and acidity were higher in this case, but both these values fall within the target band. The trial will continue in 2003 CANKER * Administering calcium hydroxide against Cancer through the sprinkler irrigation system: Despite its effectiveness, sprinkling with calcium hydroxide cannot as yet be generally recommended for practical application. All the difficulties stem from the fact that the agent does not really dissolve, and the suspension formed very rapidly settles out. FRUIT QUALITY * Optimum picking time for Santana: Santana is a relatively new variety, and further investigation is required into optimising cultivation and storage. The apples only developed their full flavour when picked some time after the point of physiological ripeness. * Sprinkling to combat sunscald: By sprinkling under specific conditions an average of 1.38 fruits per tree was protected from sunscald. Per hectare sprinkling on these three days yielded around € 621 per ha. (Assuming: 3000 trees/ha, 6 fruits/kg, price € 1.10 or € 0.20 for industrial use). * Rot resistance test: The Louis Bolk Instituut is attempting to develop a test for the evaluation of the natural resistance of the fruit. This demonstrates, for example that apples with a high nitrogen content have more and larger areas of rot than apples with a lower nitrogen content. * Prospects offered by calcium chloride (CaCl2 ) before or after harvest: A pilot experiment was carried out on a farm to look into the prospects of spraying with CaCl2 before the harvest or rinsing with CaCl2 after harvest to reduce fruit rot. Neither treatment led to a reduction in fruit rot, but rather to an increase. * International association for ‘Organic Food, Quality and Health’ (FQH): The purpose of the group of researchers and traders brought together under the FQH banner is to develop a new concept of quality based on life processes and to select and further develop relevant methods of measurement

Parameters for apple quality: and an outline for a new quality concept - part 1 report

In real life it is hard to distinguish between the two life processes, growth and differentiation. We cannot expect one measured parameter to represent only one aspect of vital quality. But for most parameters we can recognise emphases on one or more aspects of the vital quality concept. We made this prelimary classification both by thinking about the concept and by looking at the experimental results. Also the conventional parameters are interpreted as a result of these processes in a more holistic way than usual. We realise that various parameters all concerning the same aspect of our quality concept can show different levels of the aspect. To belong to the same aspect of the quality concept does not automatically mean that their correlation (see annex 14.2) must be high. We still have to get a lot of more experience to validate the parameters’ character. Here we present our first research on this topic, including the unanswered questions and realise that more experimental series will bring more and more certainty. After this first project we cannot say which parameters are so similar that it makes the other redundant. Until now we learned something from every parameter to develop our quality concept. Most inspiring for the new quality concept were the crystallisations, the delayed luminescence and the Bovis-value

Annual report 2003 LBI organic fruit growing research: including plans for 2004

Our objectives in soil management research combine a number of issues: soil fertility, production, fruit quality, growth regulation, prevention of night frost damage, leaf decomposition (scab) and practical feasibility. This will result in different regimes of weed control, fertilisation, foliar feeding and watering for each plot. The evaluation criteria remain particularly difficult to assess. The proposed revised edition of the soil book (LF39) is combined with the final publication of the regulation project which appeared in de winter of 2003 as a hand-book “Biologische Appels en Peren – teeltmaatregelen voor kwaliteitsfruit-” (Organic apples and pears – cultivation measures for quality fruit) (LF75, ed. Joke Bloksma). Time after time our research shows that good crop regulation is the basis for a quality crop. This applies to all varieties, but Elstar requires special attention because of its susceptibility to biennialism. This last year lime sulphur was available for controlling scab. This enabled us to benefit from the side effects of blossom thinning. Trials are still being run internationally on new thinning agents for organic growing. To date however there is no prospect of a more efficacious agent than lime sulphur without the undesirable side effects. This begs the question of how much more energy should be spent on this research. We take the view that there are other areas to be developed which are essential to good crop regulation. There is scope for further development of an adapted pruning method which very specifically anticipates the prospects for the coming year. Pruning also seems to be important for the new variety Topaz, while we still need to ensure that we get sufficient fruit on the tree. Many trials in which we monitor flowering and bearing rates show time and again that Elstar trees with slightly excessive growth levels have much poorer flowering rates in the following year, even where there is no excessive vigour. Thus much attention still needs to be paid to growth regulation. LaMi is running a project in Utrecht province in which demonstration trials are being carried out to encourage the use of calcium hydroxide in conventional fruit growing. As advisor the LBI contributed its experience from the projects in previous years. Infection of a fruit by fungi or disease depends among other things on the resistance of the fruit. The resistance of a product to fungi, pests and diseases is a parameter for the quality of the product. The Louis Bolk Institute is attempting to develop a test for the evaluation of the natural resistance of the fruit, in which the apple can demonstrate how well or poorly a fruit rot fungus (Botrytis c.) can spread in the flesh of the fruit. The LBI has previous experience with self-disintegration tests. The problems here were the replicability and the unknown sources of infection. Fruit quality is an increasingly important aspect of fruit production. The supermarkets in particular continually raise the standards required for (external) product quality. Using organic growing methods it may not always be possible to meet the high standards for external quality. This means that the internal quality will become increasingly important. LBI is currently running 2 projects on apple quality: “Classy Apples in the Chain” (2001-2004) which involves monitoring and working with partners in the chain to reduce the quality gap between supply and demand and also reduce the distance between the start and end of the chain. The second project, “Parameters for Fruit Quality” (2001-2003) addresses more fundamental issues about suitable quality parameters for organic production. (See also 2002 report)

Parameters for apple quality - 2 - and the development of the ‘inner quality concept’ 2001-2003

We found clear correlations between management measures, tree characteristics and fruit characteristics. This means that growers can regulate apple quality during the growing season. On the basis of the two apple experiments, we can distinguish respective sets of growth and differentiation parameters and evaluate them in the light of conventional fruit cultivation science. Our results have little new value for fruit growing in practice, however. The value of our research lies in the approach developed to draw up a quality concept and the way in which we can apply this concept to crops about which little knowledge exists regarding the relationship between management measures, crop characteristics and product quality characteristics. Our research also offers a method to validate experimental parameters

Categories and classifications in EuroWordNet

In EuroWordNet we develop wordnets in 8 European languages, which are structured along the same lines as the Princeton WordNet. The wordnets are inter-linked in a multilingual database, where they can be compared. This comparison reveals many different lexicalizations of classes across the languages that also lead to important differences in the hierarchical structure of the wordnets. It is not feasible to include all these classes (the superset) in each language-specific wordnet and to reach consensus on the implicational effects across all the languages. Each wordnet is therefore limited to the lexicalized words and expressions of a language. The wordnets are thus autonomous language-specific structures that capture valuable information about the lexicalization of each language, which is important for information retrieval, machine translation and language generation. By connecting the wordnets to a separate ontology, semantic inferencing can still be guaranteed. Still, different types of classification schemes can be distinguished among the lexicalized classes. In this paper we will further describe the properties of these different classes and discuss the advantages and effects of distinguishing them in wordnet-like structures

Coaching the process of designing a farm: using the healthy human as a metaphor for farm health

This paper is on coaching farmers in (re)designing a farm. It describes how farmers can become inspired to design a sustainable farm by the way medical doctors look at the human being and his health. Sustainability in farm management is usually strived for in such a way that damage to People, Planet or Profit is prevented. However, preventing such damage does not automatically mean that humans, animals, rural societies, landscape, and nature can develop and manifest themselves to the full extent. Only in examples where the emphasis is on positive characteristics of and actions in farming, and where the approach is based on coherence between the three layers described (agricultural production, agri-culture, and the meaning of life and existence), we observe that all stakeholders can fully express themselves. This approach is comparable with the positive way in which the World Health Organization describes human health, distinguishing three different layers of health: physical health, socio-cultural health, and mental health. Applying the metaphor of the healthy human enables us to ask relevant questions as to how to achieve farm health. The power of the metaphor of the living human lies in the possibility to introduce the concepts of life, the conscious direction, transformation and health in the process of (re)designing the farm organism. The living farm emerges under the direction of the farmer as a new entity in which the possibilities of the site, the societal and agro-ecological context and the people involved are all mutually fine-tuned. Only if all three interconnected layers of health (i.e., the physical, socio-cultural, and mental health) are equally addressed, true farm health, and, in our definition of farm health, also sustainability can be achieved. This paper does not address the issue of creating an absolutely healthy and sustainable farm but is about farm transformation and the art of development, step-by-step reshaping specific farm elements, thus allowing the entire farm to become healthier