GEOSTATISTICAL METHOD FOR INDEPENDENT SAMPLING IN KIWIFRUIT VINE TO ESTIMATE YIELD COMPONENTS

Classically used in mining problems, the semi-variogram function has been tested for its application to kiwifruit (Actinidia deliciosa (A. Chev.) C.F. Liang et A.R. Ferguson) sampling. The fruit characteristics studied were: weight, dry matter (%), soluble solid content, acidity, and the distance between fruit was taken as the number of "active" forks to go from one fruit to another. It appeared that there was a dependency between samples taken at short distance (i.e., borne by die same lateral) whatever the fruit characteristic under consideration. The variogram function increased with increasing distances, indicating less and less correlations between samples. Fruits were essentially independent where taken from different canes separated by at least two forks. An anomalous feature in fruit weight correlations at h = 8 appeared to be related to the interactions between morphogenesis and pruning in kiwifruit vines, but has a quite small effect in terms of dependency between samples.