That's an awesome article! Thank you for posting a link. To me, the important claims here are:
- external limb & fruit support encourages fruiting by way of less wasted structural growth
Seems reasonable. Neat idea
- regular, severe pruning
- limiting root growth
- limiting vertical growth
None of these things reduce fruit yield per sqft? I would assume they would
This method also looks very labor intensive. It makes sense to me for a greenhouse where the cost per sqft is far higher than growing mangoes outdoors. The article claims
growers are getting $3-5USD each for their mangoes. The USDA retail websites says mangoes
retail in US for ~$1.50/each, This website
https://novagrim.com/prices lists wholesale mango prices as ~1euro/kg. I am skeptical that doing all this work makes
economic sense. I wonder why Japan doesn't import them instead?
In any case, I am very interested because I have a greenhouse where space is at a premium. If it works for these fruits I can't imagine why it wouldn't work for citrus.
I'm not sure I want a bunch of wires hanging in my greenhouse everywhere, though, it already drives me crazy with anything in the way there. Supporting tree limbs and trunks using stiff wire to a post adjacent to the trunk might be tolerable - like staking tomatoes. I am already doing this for some to keep the branches from touching the floor and getting ripped off when moving the hose around. I wonder about the root binding also... wouldn't closely-planted, shallow-rooted trees like citrus already have limited root growth because the roots of adjacent trees will be up against each other? Maybe mangoes and avocadoes have deeper roots. Finally, are they wasting climate-controlled greenhouse space by limiting vertical growth? Why not have a lower roof at least? Unless sunlight is the limiting factor.
BTW my favorite part is the "mangoes out - money in" graphic