Apple Fertilizer Recommendations

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Our Recommendations

• Lono – For Improved Yield

  Lono is Levity’s flagship nitrogen fertilizer which greatly improves fruit number and size, and promotes good root growth. Lono provides apple trees with ‘Stabilized Amine Nitrogen’ which focuses growth on fruit development rather than vegetative growth.

• Albina – Reducing Bitter Pit & Russeting

  Albina is our highly efficient calcium fertilizer which improves fruit set, fruit firmness and reduces susceptibility to bitter pit, russeting and other physiological disorders. Conventional calcium fertilizers give erratic results because fruit are not always able to absorb calcium, making applications inefficient. Albina uses Levity’s special LoCal technology to make it easy for fruit to absorb.

• Sulis – For Improved Colour, Brix & Post Harvest Shelf Life

  Sulis is Levity’s fertilizer which helps apples to build maturity (colour and brix). Sulis maximizes the function of the enzymes responsible for maturity in the apple tree and results in better colour and brix, meaning that farmers can harvest earlier.

How Lono Improves Apple Yield.

As the primary plant nutrient, apple farms need to supply nitrogen for growth of the crop. However conventional nitrogen fertilisers disproportionately favour vegetative growth, meaning farmers are faced with a difficult balancing act between supplying enough N to achieve a good crop, and pushing out too vigorous shoot growth which detracts from yield and can increase fruit drop.

It is nitrates that drive vegetative growth. Nitrates are processed in leaves, and as they accumulate apple trees increase synthesis of the growth hormone auxin. The more nitrates the tree takes up, the more auxins are produced and the more the tree pushes towards building vegetation rather than supporting fruit development.

Different forms of nitrogen like amine and ammonium do not produce this ‘auxin effect’ but despite this switching to conventional ammonium and urea nitrogen sources still tends to produce increasingly vegetative growth as supply increases. This is due to the inherent instability of nitrogen fertiliser in the environment.

Regardless of the form applied most N given to apple orchards does not get taken up by the crop, and the majority that does make it into the trees does so in the nitrate form. This is due to bacterial activity that alters nitrogen from the form applied to nitrates, with losses along the way through leaching and volatilisation.

Levity have developed LimiN, a technology that holds nitrogen in the amine form, preventing conversion to nitrates. Our product Lono supplies stabilised amine nitrogen, and this can be used by farmers to help apple trees better allocate growth via a process known as ‘growth partitioning’.

When trees are exposed to stabilised amine N via applications of Lono, they allocate growth differently. The crop becomes less ‘apical dominant’ developing more branching rather than shoot extension, better root development, and greater emphasis on flower and fruit development.

By regularly applying small doses of Lono alongside conventional N inputs, farmers can increase the number and size of apples produced by the tree, reduce fruit drop and improve quality.

How Albina Reduces Bitter Pit & Russeting

Although fruit quality in apples is strongly linked with fruit calcium levels, it is rarely the case that the crop as a whole is calcium deficient. Even on crops with high levels of bitter pit there are frequently no signs of calcium deficiency in leaf analysis.

Indeed, when we consider the amount of fruit calcium needed to prevent bitter pit, we can see that far too much calcium is used for ‘prevention’ in terms of calcium required to solve an extremely small problem.

So how much Calcium is needed to prevent Bitter Pit?

Depending on variety and location, fruit calcium levels need to be above 5 – 5.4 mg Ca/100g fresh weight (Terblanche et al, 1980). Most apples are close to this level without any correction, with the difference between calcium level in fruit with and without bitter pit being typically between 2 and 4 ppm.

If we look at a crop with 100% bitter pit and do some simple calculations, we can see just how little calcium is needed to make the difference.

If the crop is 30MT per Ha and every apple has bitter pit, only 2% of every apple is actually affected (the lesions), making a total 600kg of deficient tissue. If the difference in calcium content between the bitter pit affected tissue and the rest of the fruit is 4ppm then this makes the amount of calcium implicated in the problem 2.4g.

This means a 2.4g calcium deficiency created 30MT of crop loss. When we see how small the level of extra calcium needed to prevent bitter pit risk, it raises questions about why we apply so much calcium to prevent it.

Why Does Bitter Pit Occur?

To understand why we get these small areas of calcium deficiency, we need to understand more about how calcium is picked up, moved around and absorbed by plants.

Unlike most other nutrient’s calcium is not phloem mobile, instead plants move calcium in the xylem with water. This means calcium moves through the plant in the same direction as water flow, moving through the plant from roots to leaves via transpiration stream.

This makes calcium movement susceptible to water availability and weather conditions, hence bitter pit increases when water flow is restricted by growing conditions. It also makes getting applied calcium to fruit tricky, as fruit is low in transpiration so receives little throughput of calcium when compared to other parts of the plant like leaves.

Absorption of calcium is also linked to presence of the auxin hormone. Tissues high in auxin absorb calcium easily, but tissues low in auxin have difficulty absorbing calcium no matter how much is available. Given that mature apples are naturally low in auxin, this makes absorption of calcium rather than availability of calcium the main driver in bitter pit susceptibility in apple crops.

When we look at the physiology of the fruit, we can learn a little about best timings for reducing bitter pit incidence. Auxin levels are highest in fruits between flowering and when the fruit is 5mm in size, this is the main period of cell division (which is powered by auxins).

As the fruit gets bigger it is focused on increasing the size of cells rather than creating cells, and auxin levels drop making it progressively harder to get calcium into fruit as it increases in size.

Use Albina to Reduce Bitter Pit.

To help improve calcium levels in apples Levity have developed LoCal, a chemistry that improves calcium absorption in the absence of auxins. This helps apple fruit (naturally low in auxins) to properly absorb calcium.

Albina uses LoCal chemistry to deliver calcium into apples, which allows farmers to use lower application rates and less frequent applications than with conventional calcium fertilisers. Albina (and other products using LoCal) have been demonstrated to reduce bitter pit on apples in field trials around the world.

How Sulis Improves Apple Colour, Brix & Post Harvest Shelf Life

Sulis builds maturity (colour and brix) in apples. It works by supplying molybdenum and boron in a special formulation that helps the fruit maximise the function of the enzymes responsible for maturation, building better levels of colour and brix to allow earlier picking.

The processes of maturation require molybdenum and boron, but as molybdenum does not produce visible deficiency symptoms, the enzymes are often not adequately functioning, leading to a slow build of colour and sugars. The Blush technology that powers Sulis activates the plant’s natural process of maturity, whilst ensuring these key nutrients in the process are available.

The special formulation of Sulis helps fruit build better levels of colour and brix to allow earlier picking. It promotes the processes of maturation that are normally triggered by the hormone ABA. Importantly, Sulis does this without causing a spike in ethylene, which can retard shelf life and create quality problems.

Sulis also contains cell wall stabilisers, so that whilst colour and sugars build, the developing fruit can also maintain firmness. Normally, there is a trade-off between colour and sugar formation and softening, Sulis is designed to manage this process so that farmers can get the taste they need whilst still picking fruit that stays firm in storage.

Sulis is proven to improve colour and brix and to bring forwards harvest in multiple field trials on a wide range of varieties in both the UK and US.