Delaying Non-Infectious Bud Failure Through Basal Epicormic Propagation
Non-infectious Bud Failure (NBF) is a disorder that affects susceptible almond cultivars, creating a zig-zag branch pattern as apical and nearby buds fail to emerge in spring. The reduction in crop productivity results not just in a potential income loss for that year, but eventual costs in switching out the orchard to new trees as NBF comes to affect the orchard to the point that the crop loss can no longer be borne. The option to switch to less susceptible cultivars is constrained by high consumer demand for ’Nonpareil’ almond traits despite ‘Nonpareil’ and its progeny’s high susceptibility. NBF expression in a nine-year-old tree where NBF was first observed in year 5, resulting in abnormal tree growth and loss of commercial productivity. Decades of research eventually established a correlation between not just the age of the specimen tree and onset of NBF, but how far from the seedling parent tree the specimen is in the line of clonal propagation. Tracking the provenance of