Cherry

Michigan Cherry Industry Research Priorities 2024-25

Submitted by:
Cherry Marketing Institute
12800 Escanaba Drive, Suite A
Dewitt, MI  48820

  1. Current and Future Plant Protection Issues:
    • IPM strategies for Spotted Wing Drosophila (SWD)
    • Disease protection (alternatives for increasingly difficult disease resistance to SDHI, SI, and QoI fungicides, including cherry leaf spot, brown rot, and mildew).
    • Arthropod protection (Plum curculio, cherry fruit fly, mites, OBLR, San Jose Scale, Trunk borers, and nematodes) via chemical and IPM efforts, basic biology, and genetics.
    • Climate Change resiliency (drought, winter hardiness, and bloom time)
    • Addressing soft fruit via orchard nutrient management, rootstocks, plant growth regulators, and photosynthesis.
    • MRL issues that impact the export markets
    • Breeding program (particularly leaf spot and armillaria resistance)
    • Orchard replant issues, including nematodes and soil health
    • Abandoned orchards

  2. Current and Future Marketing Priorities
    • New products and expanded uses of cherries-both sweet and tart cherries
    • Cherry pits and ways to reduce them in finished product
    • Production trends worldwide by variety for tart cherries
    • Varieties and production practices to discover or improve marketable traits, i.e., firmer texture, nutraceutical content, larger size, fresh market, sugar/acid balance, color, etc. (ex., high-density plantings)
    • Production development (IPM/Sustainability)
    • Market research
    • Research and development of pet food products containing cherries

  3. Other Current Production Issues
    • Computerized weather station network upgrading
    • Wildlife management issues in tree fruit
    • Fruit sweet, growth regulators
    • Bacterial canker
    • Irrigation efficiency
    • Frost protection/delayed bloom
    • De-fruiting young trees

 

Last Updated: August 2024

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