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ARS Home » Northeast Area » Kearneysville, West Virginia » Appalachian Fruit Research Laboratory » Innovative Fruit Production, Improvement, and Protection » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #304580
Title: Productivity of pruned and un-pruned 'Triple Crown' blackberry plants on the rotating cross-arm trellis system

Author
item Takeda, Fumiomi
item Rose, Ann

Submitted to: Journal of the American Society for Horticultural Science
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 4/20/2014
Publication Date: 4/23/2014
Citation: Takeda, F., Rose, A.K. 2014. Productivity of pruned and un-pruned 'Triple Crown' blackberry plants on the rotating cross-arm trellis system [abstract]. Journal of the American Society for Horticultural Science. p. 112.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: In 2012 and 2013, mature ‘Triple Crown’ blackberry plants were trained on the rotating cross-arm (RCA) trellis. By the end of the summer, as many as 30 lateral canes with lengths greater than 3.5 m had developed on three primocanes that had been bent at a 0.50-m height. In winter, the lateral canes were pruned back to 1.5 m lengths or left un-pruned to determine the effect of lateral cane length on budbreak, fruit cluster number, fruit number per cluster, fruit weight, and yield. On a plant basis, pruned and un-pruned plants possessed 36 and 54 m of cane length, 706 and 932 nodes, respectively. Pruned lateral canes had node numbers that were only 60 percent of un-pruned lateral canes, but 68 percent of buds developed a flowering shoot compared to only 32 percent of nodes on un-pruned laterals. Shortening the lateral canes to 1.5 m did not result in reduction of plant yield, fruit number, or fruit weight. The results indicated that pruning lateral canes to 1.5 m length was advantageous for blackberries trained on the RCA trellis.