@article{6193d608d6c2426aa83ebabea66c79a0,
title = "Forecasting yield in temperate fruit trees from winter chill accumulation",
abstract = "The potential yields of deciduous fruit and nut trees are strongly affected by the climatic conditions that regulate dormancy and subsequent flowering. However, the realized yield at the end of the growing season depends on several additional factors including environmental conditions and management measures. These modulating factors dilute the direct effect of chill accumulation and frustrate efforts to forecast yields. Such forecasts are also limited by a lack of data, which complicates the assessment of the relationship between chill and yield. However, information on how diminishing chill impacts crop yield is crucial for farmers and other decision-makers, particularly in warm fruit and nut growing regions. We address this challenge by adopting a probabilistic approach to yield forecasting. This approach incorporates uncertainty and generates predictions that do not consist of precise numbers, but yield expectations expressed as probability distributions. We demonstrate a set of functions that we developed in the R programming language to generate forecasts of possible yields with given chill. We apply these methods to data sets of two sweet cherry (Prunus avium L.) cultivars {\textquoteleft}Lapins{\textquoteright} and {\textquoteleft}Brooks{\textquoteright}.",
keywords = "Climate change, Dormancy, Flowering, Nut trees, Ripening, Uncertainty",
author = "C. Whitney and E. Fernandez and K. Schiffers and Cuneo, {I. F.} and E. Luedeling",
note = "Funding Information: records contained seasonal observations of marketable production for two sweet cherry cultivars ({\textquoteleft}Lapins{\textquoteright} and {\textquoteleft}Brooks{\textquoteright}) for the period from 2010 to 2017. Trees were planted at a spacing of ?. ? m between rows and ?. ? m within rows, resulting in a tree density of ? ? ? trees per ha for both cultivars. Weather data, recorded from a nearby weather station ( ? ?. ? ??S, ? ?. ? ? ?W, ? ? ? m above sea level), was downloaded from the Center for Climate and Resilience Research ([CR]2) sponsored by the University of Chile (www.cr2.cl). We selected daily minimum and maximum observations from the 1st of January ???? to tsthoe f?De?cember 2017. Winter chill was calculated with functions from the {\textquoteleft}chillR{\textquoteright} package (Luedeling, 2019). Funding Information: We would like to thank the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research for supporting this research (grant number 031B0467B) as well as to the experimental orchard ?Estacio n Experimenal La Palma? (Pontificia Universidad Cato lica de Valpara? so) for collecting and providing the data. Funding Information: We would like to thank the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research for supporting this research (grant number ? ? ?B ? ? ? ?B) as well as to the experimental orchard {\textquoteleft}Estaci{\'o}n Experimenal La Palma{\textquoteright} (Pontificia Universidad Cat{\'o}lica de Valpara{\'ı}so) for collecting and providing the data. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2021 International Society for Horticultural Science. All rights reserved.",
year = "2021",
month = dec,
doi = "10.17660/ActaHortic.2021.1327.53",
language = "English",
volume = "1327",
pages = "397--404",
journal = "Acta Horticulturae",
issn = "0567-7572",
}