2024 CLEREL Pruning Workshop Follow-up

Many thanks to all of the attendees of the 2024 CLEREL Pruning Workshop on 11/19/2024. Also known as “Whack, Hack, and Don’t Look Back", “Cut Some and Leave Some,” or “You Can’t Kill a Grapevine with a Pair of Shears.” There was some good discussion on vine size, the quantity and quality of retained nodes, and crop load balance through pruning practices. Since there were so many good questions, I put together a list of presentations and articles for further reading, and you can always send me an email (trb7@cornell.edu) with questions.

Ted Taft of CLEREL demonstrating the principles of grapevine pruning.

• Presentation Slides from the Workshop

  • 2024 CLEREL Pruning Workshop

  • 2018-2023 CLEREL Mechanical Pruning Trial with wood vs metal posts

• Articles on Concord Crop Load Balance: Ravaz Index, Y:PW, and the magic number 15

  • Appellation Cornell Article on Concord Crop Load

  • More detailed article on the Concord Crop Load Model, pruning vs fruit thinning

• Viticulture articles on pruning level, juice quality, and bud fruitfulness

  • The Concord Juice Quality Pruning Study

  • The Concord and Niagara Cane Length Study describing yield by bud position.

• Articles on Mechanical Pruning and other Mechanical Crop Control Methods

  • 2009 Mechanical Pruning paper with an Economic breakdown

  • Comparison of Hand Pruning with Mechanical Pruning, Shoot Thinning, and Fruit Thinning

• Precision Viticulture

  • Using NDVI to generate spatial maps of predicted pruning weight

  • Variable-Rate Fruit Thinning with a Mechanical Harvester for Vineyard Balance

  • Variable-Rate Mechanical Shoot Thinning