Location: Horticultural Crops Production and Genetic Improvement Research Unit
Project Number: 2072-21000-057-000-D
Project Type: In-House Appropriated
Start Date: May 21, 2020
End Date: May 20, 2025
Objective:
This project’s overall goal is to refine agricultural management practices that growers use to improve fruit and fruit product quality.
Objective 1: Determine the impacts of variety selection and production management practices on fruit and product quality components to optimize practices for superior fruit and wine production. [NP 305, Component 1, Problem Statement 1B]
Subobjective 1A: Determine primary and secondary metabolites and their targeted analyses; evaluate and optimize analytical methods where insufficient data exists.
Subobjective 1B: Evaluate developed quality component measurements on new or improved fruit and fruit products, and link to agricultural management.
Objective 2: postponed until vacancy is filled.
Objective 3: Enhance management practices for small fruit production systems by optimizing soil health, weed suppression, and the interplay between plants and ecosystem dynamics for desired outcomes.
Approach:
Project objectives will be accomplished by integrating research across three core disciplines: food chemistry/phytochemical analysis, crop physiology, and plant breeding. A systematic approach, with targeted analyses of fruit quality compounds, will be utilized to predict the magnitude that environmental factors and cultural practices impart to fruit quality. This strategy will allow us to improve and define analytical methods for plant metabolite analyses that advance our comprehension of the interactions between canopy management, vine nutrient treatments, water regimes, vineyard microbiome, vine virus status, and cultivar/genotype selections have upon fruit development, fruit quality components, and vine physiology. An additional growing season will be employed, if necessary, to account for interruptions during the experimental treatment or sampling schedules.
