Tilted Rootstock Planting for Vigorous Fruit Tree Cordons
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing methods for producing fruit trees with a horizontal main branch, such as the DAVOR system, face challenges including reduced tree vigor, high costs in bending the top, and limited flexibility in choosing the cordon height, leading to suboptimal growth and production efficiency.
Innovation Solution
A method involving grafting and planting a rootstock at a tilted angle, followed by bending the offshoot to form a trunk with a wider angle, allowing for flexible cordon height adjustment and reduced nursery operations, resulting in trees with vigorous, uniformly growing branches.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of manufacture
If the offshoot is bent horizontally at 90° in the nursery, then the tree can be planted in rows with supporting structure, but the tree vigor decreases and bending operations become costly and difficult
Solution Approach 1:
The rootstock is pre-tilted at a first angle (30-60°) during planting in the nursery, and the offshoot is subsequently bent to form a horizontal cordon. This preliminary positioning action facilitates easy planting in rows while preserving tree vigor by avoiding excessive bending stress on the main axis.
Solution Approach 2:
The invention changes the angular parameter from a fixed 90° bend to a variable first angle (30-60°) for the rootstock tilt, allowing optimization of both planting ease and tree vigor. The second angle (120-150°) for the offshoot bend is also optimized to maintain vigor while achieving horizontal positioning.
2Productivity
If the offshoot is bent horizontally to form a Guyot cordon, then the tree structure is established, but the operational costs and difficulties increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The horizontal cordon structure is preliminarily established in the nursery by tilting the rootstock and bending the offshoot before planting. This preliminary structure establishment eliminates the need for costly and difficult horizontal bending operations in the production ground, as the tree is already configured for its final position.
3Reliability
If the rootstock is planted vertically, then the tree grows with natural apical dominance, but the cordon height cannot be flexibly adjusted
Solution Approach 1:
The invention introduces dynamic adjustability in cordon height by allowing the rootstock to be tilted at variable first angles (30-60°) during planting. This dynamic configuration enables flexible adjustment of the final cordon height while maintaining apical dominance through controlled bending of the offshoot at a second angle (120-150°).
Data Source
Figure 1
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Figure 4a~4b
AI summary
A method for the production of fruit trees (2) including the steps of: grafting of an offshoot (8) or propagation material of the variety to be propagated on a grafting point of a rootstock (6), to form a tree, planting of the rootstock in a nursery, pot or greenhouse ground and subsequent transplanting of the developed tree in a production ground; wherein the planting takes place arranging the rootstock (6) tilted to one side to form with the ground an angle of pre-set amplitude, smaller than 90° and preferably of 45° and with the offshoot (8) in a substantially vertical position; in the transplanting step the rootstock (6) is arranged in the production ground in a substantially vertical position, so that the trunk (11) of the tree, which is angled in respect to the rootstock, forms a main side branch from which vine-like branches or side branches (19) orientated upwards sprout.