As determined on the test bench, 18-year-old ‘Golden Delicious’/Malling (M) 8 and ‘Golden Delicious’/M 9 graft unions fail at about 1/3 the stress required for failure of unions of ‘Golden Delicious’ and vigorous stocks (Malus domestica Borkh.). The stresses at rupture of these unions are of the same order of magnitude as reported by other workers with much younger graft unions. The average wind velocity that the ‘Golden Delici-ous’/M 8 and ‘Golden Delicious’/M 9 unions can withstand is about 10% less than that for the ‘Golden Delicious’/vigorous union, because the ‘Golden Delicious’/vigorous tree is much larger and encounters the greater wind resistance forces. The weakest unions are able to resist forces of winds over 100 km/hr. The mechanical shaking forces required to remove apples from these trees in the “worst case” situation do not exceed the maximum allowable stresses in the graft union. Failure of graft unions is not expected in normal shake-and-catch harvest.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.