As the climate changes, winter is shortening, causing vines and trees to bud earlier in the year, thereby increasing the chances they will be exposed to spring cold snaps and frost that can be hazardous to yields.
A new Cornell-developed computer model that estimates the temperatures that cause freeze damage in a dozen grape cultivars can either ease growers’ worries that no damage was likely done or help them to plan for the season when damage does occur.
The model, which is publicly available, has a web interface that allows Northeast users to select a weather station nearest to them from several thousand and choose from 12 grape cultivars to get a prediction within a couple of degrees of accuracy on whether their vines and especially the buds may have experienced freeze damage.
“If we have a freeze event that surpasses [a cultivar’s] cold hardiness level, then the bud dies and then you have an impact on harvest because the flower tissue is in the bud,” said Jason Londo, associate professor in the School of Integrative Plant Science Horticulture Section in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. “If you kill that bud, it won’t produce grapes for that season.”
The model was developed by Hongrui Wang, a doctoral student whom Londo advises. A paperdescribing the cold hardiness prediction model was published Dec. 29, 2023.
Different grape cultivars are bred with different cold hardiness and that resilience changes in a U-shaped curve as winter progresses – each cultivar is tolerant to colder temperatures in the middle of winter and less tolerant to them at the start of winter and during spring.
Click here to read more cornell.edu
Photo Credit: gettyimages-tlillico
Categories: New York, Weather