Estimation of leaf area in sweet
cherry using a non-destructive
method

P.L.  Peri; E.D.  Cittadini

Estimation of leaf area in sweet cherry using a non-destructive method

Autores

P.L. Peri

E.D. Cittadini

Editor

Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria

Descripción

Leaf area measurement can be a time consuming process and requiressophisticated electronic instruments. The objective of this research was to developa simple, accurate, non-destructive and time saving predictive model for leaf area(LA) estimation in sweet cherry trees. Linear regression equations were fitted andevaluated for three cultivars and two training systems using alternatively the length(L), the width (W) and their product (L*W) as independent variables. Regressionusing L*W variable fitted the data better (R2 = 0.994) than L or W (R2 = 0.863 and0.787, respectively). The slopes using L*W as the explanatory variable were between0.6776 and 0.6442 for different combinations of cultivar and training system.Combinations of cultivar training system showed different slopes (P<0.05), exceptfor «tatura-Bing» and «vase-Lapins». A general equation had a slope of 0.6612 withR2 = 0.993 (slightly lower than considering all combinations of cultivar and trainingsystem). Validation of the general equation using extra data from a «Lapins/Mahaleb» orchard showed high accuracy (R2 = 0.9826), but underestimated LA.However, the general equation can be used for predicting LA for practical purposes,such as estimating Leaf Area Index of commercial orchards.