Continuous Monitoring of Olive Fruit Growth by Automatic Extensimeter in Response to Vapor Pressure Deficit from Pit Hardening to Harvest

Recently, several studies on olive fruit growth have focused on circadian monitoring as an important orchard management tool. The olive fruit growth trend is described by double sigmoid model with four growth phases, where the third phase spans from the end of pit hardening to initial fruit maturation, and the last phase includes olive maturation up to fruit drop. Environmental factors play an important role in fruit growth, with vapor pressure deficit (VPD) being a keystone factor. Our experiment was designed to hourly monitor olive (Olea europaea L. cv. 'Frantoio') fruit transversal diameter from approximately initial pit hardening (II Phase), extension (III Phase) until harvest time (IV Phase) in the attempt to determine whether fruit growth dynamically responds to environmental variables such as diurnal VPD change in different stages of fruit development. Automatic extensimeters were applied in open field and VPD was calculated from data of our weather station. Throughout the experiment period, the circadian model of fruit growth showed two steps: shrinkage and expansion. Almost in all days of the third phase of fruit growth, daily response of transversal diameter to VPD formed complete clockwise hysteresis loops. During the fourth phase of fruit growth, with increasing fruit maturation, the complete clockwise hysteresis loop experienced some abnormality. At the fourth stage of fruit growth there were incomplete and partial clockwise hysteresis loops. We conclude that hysteresis can be employed to detect the shift between the end of the third phase (cell expansion) and the beginning of the fourth phase (fruit maturation) of fruit growth. The disappearance of the complete clockwise hysteresis loop and the substitution with incomplete, or partial clockwise hysteresis loops was observable only in the fourth stage of fruit growth. These results can be valuable for any smart fruit management of olive fruit production.

Automated summary

Recent studies on olive fruit growth have focused on circadian monitoring and found that environmental factors, particularly vapor pressure deficit, play a key role in fruit growth. Response of fruit transversal diameter to VPD shows different patterns during the third and fourth phases of fruit growth, which can be valuable for smart fruit management in olive production.