Flower development in sweet cherry framed in the BBCH scale

• Flower bud development has been characterised in sweet cherry.
• The phenology of sweet cherry is described according to the BBCH scale.
• Framing flower development within the BBCH scale provides a consensus phenology substrate for sweet cherry.

In recent years, a growing interest to widen the cherry (Prunus avium L.) production calendar results in cultivation out of the traditional cultivation areas. Since cherry has high chilling requirements, this often causes erratic cropping related to phenological alterations. However, appropriate phenological characterisation and comparison is hampered, due to the lack of a consensus phenological scale for this species. In this work, we have characterised flower development in sweet cherry, framing it in the BBCH scale. For this purpose, the phenology of two cherry cultivars has been characterized over 2 consecutive years and adapted to the BBCH code, and flower development has been framed within the principal growth stages of this code. This provides a unified standardised approach for phenological comparative studies.

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