Sweet cherry production in controlled environment

Sweet cherry production worldwide is grown in the open land. Production technique is more or less similar with scions grafted on dwarfing and semi-dwarfing rootstock and trees arranged in single rows. Sweet cherries can be grown in Norway in areas with suitable local climatic conditions up to 60°N. All orchards have high-density planting systems and are rain covered. Rain-induced fruit cracking in cherries remains a problem at an international level. The most common systems in Norway are multibay high tunnel systems and retractable rain covers. Covered orchard tunnel systems offer not only the advantage of rain exclusion but also allow additional manipulation of the environment, tree growth and fruiting. In general, sweet cherry high tunnel production gives increased yields of larger fruit than in the open land, but investment costs are higher. One more advanced way of producing sweet cherries is to grow the trees in small pots in greenhouses. A greenhouse gives opportunity to control the temperature regime and in that way program the maturity of the fruits. Research is conducted to test different cultivars, rootstocks, training methods in high-density production systems (1 tree m(-2)) with different fertigation levels. Preliminary results show that the yield potential is much higher than in the open land with larger fruits. Challenges are to optimize the water and nutrition supply and adjust the temperatures to obtain large yields of high quality fruits during different periods of the season.