Midwinter Bud Hardiness of Grape Breeding Program Selections
A summary of several years’ data on mid-winter cold hardiness of selections and varieties from Bruce Reisch’s grape breeding program at NYS Agricultural Experiment Station vineyards: Grape Breeding Selection Midwinter Bud Hardiness 1990-2010 now available.
Cold hardiness reports are available through the Viticulture and Enology site here.
Video to checking bud mortality in your vineyard
Growers can determine roughly how many live or dead buds are present in vineyard to guide pruning decisions by collecting dormant canes in the vineyard and cutting buds open with a razor blade. Here are brief video presentations from the Finger Lakes Grape Program:
Evaluating Bud Injury Prior to Pruning (Part 1&2, two videos, youtube)
With funding from Viticulture Consortium-East, the Lake Erie Regional Grape Program, Inc., and the New York Wine and Grape Foundation, we are posting bud cold-hardiness information for four representative varieties in New York, measured at commercial and Cornell vineyards in the Lake Erie, Finger Lakes, and Hudson Valley regions.
Varieties chosen include Riesling, Cabernet Franc, Cayuga White, and Concord as representative varieties exhibiting a broad range of bud hardiness under NY conditions.
Vineyards will be sampled every two weeks from December 1 through March. Buds are subjected to differential thermal analysis (DTA), with approximately 30 buds total from the first 8 nodes of at least 5 canes per variety at each sampling date.
Most recent LT50 (Median Bud Freezing Temperature) values for each region are listed in separate tables below.
Clicking on a variety name will bring up individual graphs of minimum/maximum temperatures and seasonal change in bud freezing temperatures.
Seasonal Bud Mortality for each variety/site can also be found on the graphs.
For previous four years’ information, see:
Cold Hardiness 2013-2014
Cold Hardiness 2012-2013
Cold Hardiness 2011-2012
Cold Hardiness 2010-2011
Cold Hardiness 2009-2010
