Mario: With the digitalization of what happening in the orchard. So for example, bloom when the drones are gonna fly. They were thinking to fly the drones in I nitially yesterday. Uh, this is a company from the Netherlands So they're coming from the Netherlands to fly the drones because they have the most advanced technology to produce blossom density maps at the orchard.
Bloom
Paul: uhhuh.
Mario: They can scan the orchard.
Paul: Okay.
Mario: From above and you can see what are the trees that are in bloom and what are the trees that are not in bloom or, or have less bloom than other trees.
Paul: Is it infrared or is it just straight? Uh, photography.
Mario: It's photography.
Paul: Okay. So it's photography
Mario: and they have a algorithm.
Uhhuh, they, they process the, the pictures and they're able to stitch all the images and they're able to come out with the blossom map density. In a PDF file.
Paul: That blossom map, does that indicate potential future harvest?
Mario: Indicate many things. Okay. But the development of the technology in the way, how we have some area of the, of the block with blossoms.
Mm-hmm. Another area with less blossoms is that the fruit set also is different.
Paul: Okay.
Mario: Based on the blossom density, based on the fruit set. Low median or high in each tree, we can apply the plant growth regulators in a variable rate spraying mode.
Paul: Oh,
Mario: okay. Okay. So the technology, if we're able to see what is there, what was able to set based on the blossom density, the machines that are starting to spray that, we have some machines that we tested last year.
In a proof of concept trial that initially was, is able to recognize another tree, is able to spray another tree. So we spray, we put spray records, little tags, uhhuh that you can see if the thing spray or not, that particular tree. So we were able to corroborate that those machines are able to to spray.
At the tree level, so we know that. So now we wanna do it on the go, right? This year we wanna do it on the go. So we wanna spray and do variable ray spraying or throw little fruitlets. To be able to control the initial crop load. So that kind of the idea.
Paul: Is there any variation in the, in the type of apple that's growing?
I mean,
Mario: no, it's the same. It's the same. The only thing that where we are trying to do this are in the high, high value cultivars
Paul: Okay.
Mario: Where precision crop load management paid the most to be able to have the right amount of apples at harvest. The reason why we are doing precision crop load management so early in may.
Seven, starting from blossom scans because we wanna have the exact amount of apples at harvest, that they're gonna have the right amount of fruit size, quality, color, flavor, whatever. But we wanna have 56 apples or 80 apples, 75 apple per tree, or 125 apple per, depending on the canopy volume that we have for those trees to load to, to be able to grow fruit.
Paul: You mentioned 50 75. 125 as as apples on a tree, depending, depending on the tree. Age.
Mario: Okay. So depending on how, how big the tree uhhuh is, is how much apple we can crop in that particular tree.
Paul: That's funny because I've never really thought of how many apples on a tree. I just think of them as. Existing in the orchard and they have apples.
Mario: Yeah. In a mature, in a mature tree, you can have 400 apple, but the 400 apple are gonna be very small.
Paul: Okay.
Mario: In the same tree, through precision crop load management, perhaps you can have 260 apples that are gonna be bigger uhhuh and they're gonna have better fruit quality. So it's a question of managing initial fruit set.
Managing the initial blossom density almost from from blossom. In reality, we start from pruning, okay, managing the crab law. Okay? So we really adjust the crop load, the amount of buds that are gonna spread out flowers through pruning. So through pruning in the dormant season, we start managing the crop load.
The second moment, the second timing, it blossom thinning. Second process when the fruitlet, the four five millimeter, we call it petal fall. Okay? When the petals start falling from the cluster, from the flowers, the little fruitlets that are set at that moment, they are around four to five millimeters in in diameter.
That is rootstockt he third moment that we do some precision crop load management with plant growth regulator. After that, we have the fourth window that is around eight to nine to 10 millimeter. Fruit size where the fruitlet are the most sensitive to the plant grow regulators, that at the moment that if you haven't done anything before, but you have a significant amount of fruitlet growing in the tree, it.
That is the moment that the plant grow regulators are gonna be more effective. Okay? Because those fruitlets are growing to such high rate of growth that are very sensitive to the chemical you don't want all the fruit to, to, to be able to continue growing. You want them to upsize.
Paul: It's essentially a chemical pruning of the, of the tree.
Mario: It's a chemical. It's a chemical process.
Paul: Okay.
Mario: With the exception of the traditional pruning of dormant pruining. Pruning that is by hand.
Paul: Yeah,
Mario: but the rest started from bloom. Petal fall, eight to 10 millimeters and [rescue thinning that we call it that done at the 16 millimeters beyond 16 or beyond 20 millimeter is very difficult to drop a fruitlet with chemicals.
. Okay. The only way to drop it is with your hands. So, so that is called hand thinning.
Paul: So the chemicals that are used now, whenever we think of chemicals, we think of dangerous things. Some of us do anyway. Yes, yes, of course. So what are these chemicals? Are they, we assume
Mario: that they're
Paul: are,
Mario: are compounds?
Most of them are hormones.
Paul: Okay.
Mario: Most of them are synthetic hormones that made the fruit to upsize.
Paul: Okay. So we're not talking about toxins?
Mario: we are not talking about insecticides or fungicides. These are plant growth regulators that are used are used for chemical thinning.
Paul: Okay?
Mario: And chemical thinning is 50% of the grower decision in a OR chart.
So it it, the most important moment you, of course, you don't need to have diseases, you don't have to have five blight, a scab, a bunch of diseases. You have to have the right amount of fruit per tree to be able to get the maximum price later.
Paul: Okay. The thing that fascinates me about apples is they're all grafted, right?
Mario: Yes.
Paul: There are no commercial trees that are grown from seed, right?
Mario: Yeah. You can have, but those are gonna be giant trees.
Paul: Okay.
Mario: Okay. Growing on their own roots. Okay. So, so we call them seedlings, seedling trees.
Paul: Okay. And, and they have more genetic variability, is that correct?
Mario: they're more, uh, um. You have an apple, right?
You have 10 seeds and each of those one is a seedling and they're different between them.
Paul: So with that apple, with the 10 seeds, I'm gonna plant those 10 seeds and I'm gonna come up with possible 10 variations.
Mario: Yes.
Paul: Okay.
Mario: 10. 10 childrens.
Paul: Right. That could have their own personalities Yes. And behave in different ways.
Yes. Whereas in a commercial orchard, you start with [00:08:00] clones, everything is cloned.
Mario: So it, yeah. You have the rootstock. It the same piece, but it's a dedicated piece that has rootstock characteristic that was batted with a particular scion wood. Mm-hmm. That is coming from the same cultivar. Okay. It the same, the same orchard that you like those apples, you like that quality of that fruit in that particular block and you collect bud wood, little shoots, uhhuh with three or four nodes there, and from each node.
Each No, and each no. With left variability, you do the grafting in the nursery, so you have bundles when you collect bud wood in the winter when it's dormant, so you are pruning uhhuh. But if you're already thinking that you wanna use that bud wood, you collect the bundles or shoot dormant and you keep them in a refrigerator.
In March or February, on January until is the moment of [00:09:00] grafting in the nursery, that variability is way less than the variability that we have
Paul: with seeds.
Mario: With seeds. Yeah.
Paul: So how long does it take from, so if I'm starting an orchard and I'm grafting my, my first trees, how
Mario: to produce. Yeah. So today with a dwarfing, oke.
When, when you're using a dwarfing rootstock and the, the way how we do high density planting today, that dwarfing rootstock is also very precautious. Okay? It is able to give precocity to the scion wood that was grafted. Okay? Okay. So when you have the rootstock phase now in May, planted now in, in the, in the field, in the roost stove, in the nursery.
You have the rootstock. That rootstock is gonna be budded in late July, early August. The bud is gonna sleep during the winter [00:10:00] mm-hmm. Of 2026, and it's gonna grow in 2026 next year. Mm-hmm. That year. The tree can be finished, the tree can be dig out, the tree can be planted, and the tree can even bloom the first year in the orchard.
So some rootstock are so precautious that even in the nursery phase sometime the apple tree, the the Scion wood can bloom a little bit.
Paul: Wow.
Mario: And, and so that, but, but that is influenced by the rootstock. Okay. That doesn't mean that you can start producing Apple right away. It's gonna take so you can, you can bloom.
Mm-hmm. You can bloom. But many times our recommendation or my recommendation, Terrance Robinsons recommendation. Our Cornell recommendation are to de-blossom in the first year. Okay. We don't want the three to spend so much energy in, in blossom fruit set, growing the [00:11:00] fruit. Because what we really want is to grow the tree.
The first year, even though we could have 15, 12 apples a apple per tree, and not that we want that, we usually ask the grower to de blossom or de fruit. If the grower we're not able to remove the flowers, we ask them to defruit the little fruit like very early on at the A nine 10 millimeter.
Paul: Okay.
Mario: In, so the tree can grow because if the tree go in production mode, it's putting all its energy towards putting
Paul: all the fruit.
Yes. Yes. So how recent is this cycle where, where we're able to graft, dwarf rootstock? Uh, when this started? Yeah, when did with
Mario: dwarfing rootstock?
Paul: Yeah.
Mario: This started the first dwarfing rootstock. It started in England in the 19 55, 19 57.
Paul: Okay.
Mario: Those are the first ones. Dwarfing dwarfing rootstock, through breeding, through different breeding until the breeding program at Cornell began.
the first cross for the Cornell Geneva rootstocks that we have here also, uh, started in 1971. Wow. The first cross.
Paul: Okay. The
Mario: first cross and after that we had the seedlings and we had the selections and the line that we had today for different parts and different, we had many different clones, more than 50% of the amount of material being used in the US with dwarfing rootsocks is a Cornell engineered rootstock today in, in the United States. Wow. So of the 9 million tree, 10 million tree being produced in the us. Like at least 50% of those one. So the M nine rootstock M nine, uh, that is the traditional, the most, the, the M nine coming from England have been replaced because it's a technology.
I would say, I always explain this like a technology from a car from the 1950, 1960, versus a new car with more. Uh, things. Horsepower. Yeah. Defensive. Better mileage. Yeah. Things like
Paul: that. So, if I wanted to start an orchard, how do I go about getting the, the rootstock from Cornell? Or do I just, is it so,
Mario: so you have to, if you're, if you're a grower, if you wanna start a orchard with Cornell Geneva technology like a grower Uhhuh, you have to buy the trees.
The trees that are being produced with Cornell Geneva technology are some nursery who had the license to sell Cornell Geneva Rootstock. So most of those nurseries are located in Washington state.
Paul: Okay. In the
Mario: Pacific Northwest.
Paul: Wow.
Mario: Okay. So those are the nursery that are, so usually if you wanna get. Golden Delicious in Geneva or Honeycrisp on Geneva 11.
Or Honeycrisp on Geneva 41. Or Gala?] Gala, or, or, or any? Cultivar. The biggest stock are the nursery in the Pacific, uh, Northwest. Okay. Most of the nursery have the technology today. We have, we have nursery here in the east also with the technology, but they have less amount.
Paul: Okay? So then if a, a new variety comes along and you want to replace all those trees, you have to start all over again.
You
Mario: what we are doing today? Okay. What we are doing today with the old cultivars that we're planted already, whether it's Jonagold, Empire, Macintosh, Macoun, Ginger Gold, all the old that we have for many, many, many years through grafting.
Paul: Okay.
Mario: Through grafting in the orchard. So, so it's, it's a remotion of the top part of the tree.
Of the old, part of the tree. And because the root are already big by grafting. Okay. With a stick in this case. Not a bud, it's a stick that we insert in the Cambium. Uhhuh. Okay. So we insert a stick and with two or three buds and one of the bud gonna become the tree. So that's the way how we have been grafting a significant amount of, a significant amount of acreage in Western New York Uhhuh because the apples start going down price.
Uh, the old. So growers start grafting. In the last 10 year, 10 15 years, significant amount of acreage have been grafting over. So for gala, mainly Gala. Okay. Fuji and honey, honey crisp. Yeah, of course. Those are the three cultivars that have been grafted the most on top of fire. Jongold, Mutsu,
Paul: we know that wine is, is the, the grapes are influenced by.
The land that they're planted in the particular composition of that soil. Is that the same with apples?
Mario: Yeah, I believe it's the same, but we are not making wine, so wine with the apple unless it's cider,
Paul: right?
Mario: So definitely it's an influence of terroir. But in our science of traditional pomology, we don't know so much about the influence of terroir in the traditional Apple gala.
Apple or honey crisp apple that is gonna be a stored. It's gonna be sold later to Wegmans or Costco. We are starting to learn more, and I don't work in cider apples, but through cider apples like making wine, I think so that's scion. It more relevant.
Paul: Okay. For
Mario: the or Cole or something that you have to produce in the, in our case, more a fresh product.
Uhhuh more the flavor.
Paul: Okay.
Mario: Can you see that? Yeah. So it is that why the effect of terroir haven't been studied to the level that should be studied for cider apples.
Tree fruit science is a big science, so it's without end.
