First of all this thread is discussing Golden Negate, not Dancy. I have doubts about the above reasons why an alternate bearing becomes ever bearing. My Golden Negate is in a greenhouse and thus has summer like temperatures year around. It is fed regularly, and it is an alternate bearing tree. Personally, I have never known of a Golden Nugget tree that was not alternate baring.
，
Based on the article below, it is hard to avoid alternative bearing for GN because early harvest is almost not an option.
--------------
4 Severity of alternate bearing
The severity of alternate bearing appears to be related to extremes in crop load and to late harvest in the on-crop year. In some cases, heavy crops are still on the tree during floral induction and sometimes during anthesis and initial fruit set and in these cases earlier harvest is not an option.
5 Effect of fruit on return bloom
Fruit have a definite effect on the number of flowers and the total number of spring shoots that develop in the return bloom. The lack of flowers in the off-crop year is characteristic of years following a heavy fruit load as shown by Figure 4 (Sorry, I was not able to copy the photo from the PDF file). The presence of a large number of fruit appears to have an inhibitory effect on floral shoot production as well as vegetative growth and, thus, reduces flower number and yield, rather than influencing fruit set. The number of flowers and yield is inversely proportional to crop load in terms of the number of fruit produced the preceding year. The length of the time the crop remains on the tree after maturity increases the degree of alternate bearing. Therefore, early harvest is very important to prevent alternate bearing.
6 Effect of fruit on vegetative growth
Fruit have an inhibitory effect on vegetative shoot growth which leads to a reduction in potential bearing positions in the following spring. Biennial or alternate bearing can therefore be induced through a lack of flowering positions after an on-crop year. Citrus flowering should not be viewed independently from the previous crop and vegetative growth flushes that occur throughout the season. A heavy crop load (on-crop) results in less and shorter summer shoots. Therefore, on-crop trees have very little or no summer vegetative flush, and this may reduce the next season’s bloom. Also, in a sparse flowering year, most of the spring flush shoots will be vegetative and the few floral shoots produce a light crop, which in turn results in the production of many floral shoots and a few vegetative shoots in the next spring, which will subsequently result in a heavy fruit load. The number and length of vegetative shoots that grow throughout the season is very important to the return bloom. The balance between vegetative and reproductive growth in a tree is important for a constant yield year after year.
Topic: alternative bearing and late ripe/late pickup (Read 1931 times)