Critical irrigation threshold and cranberry yield components

Yield components are useful for characterizing the impact of crop management parameters on cranberry yield and are known to be influenced by irrigation management. This study was conducted to evaluate the potential contribution of cranberry yield components to maximizing yield, and the influence of the soil water tension threshold used to initiate irrigation (SWT1) on those components. During the 2011 and 2012 growing seasons, tensiometers were installed at three production sites in Quebec to test SWT1 values ranging from 5.5 to 10.0 kPa. Sites were cropped to cranberries to evaluate the impact of these irrigation treatments on yield components. The four most important cranberry yield components related to final yields were, in order of importance, the number of marketable berries per quadrat (B-M/Q), the number of uprights per quadrat (U/Q), the number of marketable berries per upright (B-M/U), and the marketable fruit set (B-M/F). Significant reductions in B-M/Q,B-M/U and B-M/F were observed when SWT1) varied from 8.5 to 10.0 kPa while a reduction in U/Q was associated with a SWT1 of 5.5 kPa. A SWT1 ranging from 7.0 to 8.0 kPa significantly improved the principal yield components. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.