Modeling effects of weather and source-sink relationships on mango fruit growth

Abstract

We modeled the effects of weather and source-sink factors on mango fruit growth. The peach fruit-growth model "Cashoo" was adapted for mango fruit. The model accounts for the main processes of fruit growth, i.e., leaf photosynthesis, fruit demand, fruit respiration, and storage and mobilization of leaf and stem reserves. Simulations for three successive years and for various leaf-to-fruit ratio treatments showed good agreement with observed fruit growth data. Simulations of fruit growth under different climatic conditions, especially with contrasting temperature and radiation, and for different values of initial fruit dry mass and leaf-to-fruit ratio, showed that variations in fruit growth among years can be partly explained by climatic variations through their effects on leaf photosynthesis, fruit demand and fruit growth rate. However, climatic changes contribute substantially less to observed variability in fruit growth than to initial fruit dry mass and leaf-to-fruit ratio.

An overview of preharvest factors influencing mango fruit growth, quality and postharvest behaviour

“…fruit demand and growth rate. The contribution of temperature to fruit demand can be associated with the daily variation in degree-days used to compute fruit demand in the model of mango growth in dry mass (Léchaudel et al, 2005a). In this study, the model predicted the observed response of fruit growth to changes in temperature between seasons among controlling conditions of carbon and water supplies.…”

“…Moreover, leaf-to-fruit ratio and the associated changes in carbon availability may have an additional effect on photosynthetic capacity by affecting the relationship between key parameters such as the maximal rate of carboxylation (V cmax ), the light-saturated rate of photosynthetic electron transport (J max ), and N a . Despite the increase in source activity (Urban and Léchaudel, 2005) and the mobilisation of both leaf and stem reserves (Léchaudel et al, 2005a), mango size was smaller in low leaf-to-fruit ratio treatments (Table 2). On the contrary, increasing the leaf-to-fruit ratio from 50 to 100 leaves per fruit increased source size and thus carbon availability, and lead to fruit with higher sugar contents in the flesh.…”

“…The first model functions at the branch level and takes the effects of changing source-sink relationships on fruit growth in dry mass into account by simulating the main processes involved, i.e. source activity, mobilisation of reserves, respiration and fruit demand (Léchaudel et al, 2005a). The second model is based on a biophysical representation of mango fruit growth in water mass and takes account of both reversible elastic and irreversible plastic components of growth (Léchaudel et al, 2007).…”

Carbon allocation in fruit trees: from theory to modelling

“…These regulations are also considered in the sourcesink models where the conditional net sink strength, and thus the carbon partitioning, is regulated by the history of the sink itself. Moreover, in some source-sink models, the Trees (2008) 22:269-282 273 source strength is regulated by the sink strength (Léchaudel et al 2005) or by the amount of reserves in leaves (Lescourret et al 1998). It is interesting to notice that the high genotypic differences observed in peach photosynthesis by Quilot et al (2002) is not related to the variation of the potential photosynthesis that is very similar between genotypes, but to differences in fruit sink strength.…”

Effect of Pruning Intensities on the Performance of Fruit Plants under Mid-Hill Condition of Eastern Himalayas: Case Study on Guava

“…Pruning intensity also affects the fruit weight under high density planting [7]. Although a high number of fruit bads per plant is desirable to achieve higher yield per unit area, the competition for assimilates among fruits can reduce whole canopy leaf area, which leads to a lower fruit quality [8]. Thus pruning and its intensity is very crucial for proper orchard management and performance of fruit trees.…”