Evaluation of shoot growth and fruitful buds of ‘niagara rosada’ grape submitted to different units of pruning

Abstract

This research was an attempt to evaluate different units and dates of pruning for ‘Niagara Rosada’ grape produced out of season in the Northwest of Parana state, Brazil. The trial was carried out in a 5-year-old commercial vineyard budded on ‘Riparia do Traviú’ rootstock, located at Marialva city, PR. The vineyard was trained in a horizontal bilateral cordon and planted in a 2,0 m x 1,0 m spacing. The following treatments were evaluated according to the number os buds left on cane or spur: a. cane-pruning (6-8 buds) on january 5th, 2001; b. half-long pruning (4-5 buds) on january 5th, 2001; c. spur-pruning (1-2 buds) on january 5th, 2001; d. cane-pruning (6-8 buds) on january 19th, 2001; e. half-long pruning (4-5 buds) on january 19th, 2001; f. spur-pruning (1-2 buds) on january 19th, 2001. All treatments were applied after the harvesting originated from winter pruning made on July, 2000. A randomized block with 6 treatments and 4 replications in a 3 x 2 factor design (3 units of pruning x 2 periods) was used as a statistical model. Each plot was composed by 4 trees. The following parameters were compared through variance analysis: porcentage of shooting buds and porcentage of shooting buds with clusters. Spur-pruning treatments (1-2 buds) showed the lowest averages for shooting and porcentage of shooting buds with clusters, whereas the cane and half-long pruning treatments (6-8 and 4-5 buds, respectively) showed the highest averages for these paratemers, indicating that both pruning intensities are more appropriate for out of season production of this cultivar. There was no difference between the dates of pruning in relation to the evaluated parameters.