Concept of chilling requirments and its significance in
horticultural crops
Name of student : Akarshit Dhiman
(MSc Fruit Science)
Submitted to : Dr. F A Khan
Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences
and Technology of Kashmir
CHILLING REQUIREMENT
The chilling requirement of a fruit crop is
the minimum period of cold weather after
which a fruit-bearing tree will blossom.
It is often expressed in chill hours or chilling
unit. The calculation of chilling hours
involve adding of the total amount of time
in a weather spent at certain temperature.
Some buds have chilling requirement to
bloom and some seeds have chilling
requirement to sprout.
Biologically, the chilling requirement is a
CHILLING UNITS or CHILLING HOURS
Chilling unit in agriculture is a metric
of plants exposure to chilling
temperature.
Chilling temperature extends from
7°C or even 16°C to freezing point
depending upon different models
One chilling unit in the simplest
model is equal to one chilling hour
exposure to chilling temperature.
These units are summed up for whole
season to calculate total chilling
units
STAGES IN CHILLING
REQUIREMENT
• Chilling in trees acts in two stages. The first
is reversible Chilling which helps to build up
the precursor to dormancy, but the process
can be easily reversed with a rise in
temperature.
• After the level of precursor reaches a certain
threshold, dormancy becomes irreversible and
will not be affected by short term temperature
peak.
• Planting of low chilling cultivars in a region
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1) All model requires
8:00AM
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CHILLING
UNIT
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2) The simplest model
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MODEL
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every full hour of
temperature below 7°C.
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CHILLING UNIT MODEL BY
RICHARDSON Temperature below 1.4 °C
has o count.
0 One hour of Temperature
between 1.5 to 2.4 °C is
1
assigned 0.5units.
One hour of
0 temperature between
2.5 to 9.1 °C is
2 assigned 1 unit.
Temperature above
0 16°C has been
assigned
3 negative weight.
Plants that
Require Chilling
All fruits that
Chilling in
grows in
orange and other
temperate zone
e.g. apple, 1 2 citrus produces
more flowers and
blueberries,
peach, grapes, better tasting
Plants that fruits.
pears etc. like
Vegetables Require
cabbage, carrot,
sugar beet etc
Chilling
All bulb plants
needs some chill
to produce 3 4 require chilling u
nits
seeds.
CHILLING UNIT REQUIREMENTS BY FRUIT
CROPS
LOW CHILLING
VARITIES
APPLE
ALMOND
APRICOT
PEAR
CHERRY
LOW CHILLING VARIETIES
Anna, Beverly hills,
APPLE Gordon, sundowner
All-In-One,
Garden Prince ALMOND
APRICOT Gold Keist, Flora gold
Hood, orient PEAR
CHERRY Lapins, Stella
Rest breaking Agents
• Some chemical substance like hydrogen
cynamide when applied in spring can partially
mitigate the effects of insufficient chilling.
• BudPro can substitute for up to 300 hours
and chillingbut excessive spraying and timing
error can also damage buds.
• TDZ can be applied in apple to prevent bud
breaking by applying before initiation of
chilling.
• Gibberellins (50-200ppm) can be used to
break dormancy in cherry and peach.
THANK YOU
FOR PAYING
ATTENTION
