A bioclimatic model for forecasting olive yield

• Type: Article in International Scientific Journal
• Date: 2009

Authors

RIBEIRO, H (Author) Other; CUNHA, M (Author) FCUP; ABREU, I (Author) Other

Journal

Title: Journal of Agricultural Science

Vol. 147

Pages: 647-656

ISSN: 0021-8596

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Indexing

ISI Web of Knowledge - 12 Citations

Scopus - 11 Citations

Other information

Authenticus ID: P-003-DZQ

DOI: 10.1017/s0021859609990256

Abstract (EN): The aim of the present study was to develop a hierarchical bioclimatic model for forecasting olive crop yields in the Alentejo region of south-eastern Portugal. The model was estimated for three different developmental stages: (1) at flowering, using only the regional pollen index (RPI); (2) at fruit growth using RPI and a plant water requirements index (PWRI) and (3) at fruit maturing using RPI plus a water requirements index plus a phytopathological index (PPI). Olive airborne pollen was sampled from 1999 to 2007, using a Cour trap installed in Reguengos de Monsaraz. The meteorological parameters used in the calculation of the post-flowering indices corresponded to data from a meteorological station located near the airborne sampling point. At the flowering stage, 0.66 of the regional olive yield can be explained by the RPI with an average deviation between observed and predicted production of 0.15 for the forecast model internal validation and of 0.19 for the cross-validation. The addition of the variable PWRI to the forecasting model explained an additional 026 of the variation, while the PPI explained an additional 0.05. The final bioclimatic model, with all the three variables tested, explained 0.97 of the regional olive fruit yield being the average deviation between observed and predicted production of 0.04 for the internal validation of the model and of 0.07 for the external validation. The hierarchical nature of this bioclimatic model, along three different development stages, enabled the prediction to be updated as the growing season progressed.

Language: English

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific

No. of pages: 10