The influence of mechanical pruning on olive production and shaker efficiency

Abstract

In Portugal, olive farmers, particularly those with orchards of around 100 trees per hectare, are facing increasing pruning costs every year. As a result they tend to lengthen pruning intervals.

With the purpose of studying a mechanised alternative to the labour intensive manual pruning practice, the authors established in 1997 field trials with the following three treatments: T1 -manual pruning cutting with a chain saw; T2 - mechanical pruning, performed by a tractor mounted cutting bar provided with 6 circular disc-saws; T3 -mechanical pruning, as in T2, followed by a manual pruning complement.

In each test site, olives were harvested using a trunk shaker. Total production per tree, as well as the shaker efficiency was also evaluated.

This paper, updating the research work previously presented at the 5th International Symposium on Olive Growing (Dias et al., 2004), shows the following major results:

In both olive orchards tested, the cumulative results in yield in the subsequent four harvesting campaigns from the date of pruning, reveal no significant differences (P>0,1) between pruning treatments.

In one of the olive orchards, shaker performance was not influenced by the way trees had been pruned. However, in other orchard, shaker efficiency was observed to be significantly lower on trees that had been pruned mechanically.