National and international experts analyzed each of the factors of the avocado preharvest, which are influencing the deterioration of the fruit after harvest. This, because studies on the matter have called these factors "a multifactorial problem" and were precisely the issues that led for three years hypothesis of an unpublished study by the National Institute of Agricultural Research (INIA), whose results were presented at the seminar "Irrigation, nutrition and rootstock on the quality and condition of Hass Avocado," which took place at the Eden Resort in Quillota.
During his presentation, project manager, Raul Ferreyra, raised the technological,
nutritional, water management problems among others, that were detected during the development of the research and that affect the quality and yield of fruit. The first was the problem of high variability, then according to the expert, "not all gardens are equal."
"There are orchards that come with a certain condition and others with very different fruit. We believe this problem is generated in the pre-harvest. That is, what producers do with water management, nutrition, climate, orchard management, pruning, the density of the orchards, is influencing the life of the fruit," he explained.
A second element was that this problem did not depend on a single factor: "There is nitrogen, not calcium, it is not only planting density, the age of the garden, but a combination of factors are influencing simultaneously. It is not enough to know a factor to predict what will happen, but it is a multifactorial issue."
A third aspect was based on the belief that there are factors of soil, climate and management that affect the quality of fruit. To elucidate these questions, 55 orchards were pre-selected or sites planted in different weather conditions, topography and soil (physical and chemical), then 42 were selected, to relate the indicator the orchard, with the postharvest life of fruit through experiments that simulated fruit shipments to distant markets.
Source: Diarioelobservador