Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Stages of Budbreak

Like anxious parents, each year, we anticipate the coming of budbreak. Our temperature between January and March was like a yoyo, a high of nearly 70 oF on February 1st, followed by a low of -10 oF during the Valentine's Day weekend and a high of nearly 80 oF March 10th, what's a plant mother to do?
I took photos of our buds and looked at another blogpost called Bud Phenology and looked at this photo:
I compared the stages of budbreak in the above photo with what I am currently seeing in our vineyard:





Our buds are definitely into the start of swelling. In general, our Auxerrois seems to be behind, our Chardonnay and Chenin Blanc exhibit a range of stages from winter bud to bud swelling.
Here is an excellent reference to learn more about the stages of budbreak:
L. Andreini, R. Viti, and G. Scalabrelli, ""The morphological evolution of bud break in Vitis vinifera L.", Vitis, 48 (4), 153–158 (2009).

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