Abstract

In his talk, Dr Samach will provide a background on the phenomena of alternate bearing. Mainly, how heavy fruit load of one year reduces flowering the next year, leading to lower yields and entry into a biennial cycle. I will give examples of this phenomena in many fruit-bearing trees, discuss previous research on this topic, explain our approach to studying this phenomena and present our recent findings in olives and apples. For each species I will discuss the molecular mechanism of flower induction and how heavy fruit load interferes in this induction. I will then layout our current thoughts on this topic, including new experiments we are now conducting.