Grove management starts with planning of the planting site, and by comprehending every operation until harvesting time in order to achieve the best marketable fruit yield and quality. It includes horticultural practices such as grove establishment, irrigation, nutrition, canopy management, and grove protection. Importantly, fruit quality starts in the grove. In this chapter we are focusing on grove planning with special focus on tree spacing, canopy management, and tree size control, and crop load management from a horticultural point of view.
Good grove design and management has, among others, the goal of providing a canopy structure able to capture optimum light intensity and minimize competition from neighboring plants. It is well known that for a given cultivar and environment combination, an optimum planting density exists for maximizing yields (Schumann et al., 2012). In planning a citrus grove, attention must be paid to site selection, choosing an adequate variety (scion) and rootstock combination to better adapt to soil characteristics and environmental conditions, and determining the correct tree spacing.
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Source:
Fernando Alferez
University of Florida