Researchers of Wageningen University & Research (WUR) in the Netherlands are working on a robot to prune red currant. Once they have succeeded in this, the next step will be to prune apple and pear trees too. “In the case of red currant, pruning is rather easy in comparison with pruning pip fruit or stone fruit”, researcher Peter-Frans de Jong of WUR tells. “The best berries grow on middle-length one-year-old shoots. When pruning, all two-year-old branches are removed and a choice has to be made which one-year-old shoots can remain and which ones are pruned. Basically, these are far fewer parameters than when pruning apple or pear trees, for instance”.
Read the article in the January edition of EFM
