Relationships between fruit weight and diameter at 60 days after bloom and at harvest for three apple cultivars

Early-season fruit diameter measurements for ‘Gala’, ‘Fuji’, and ‘Honeycrisp’ apples in three orchards for 3 years were used to develop regression models to estimate fruit weight at harvest. Fruit weight at harvest was linearly related to fruit diameter 60 days after bloom, but intercepts and slopes were not homogeneous for all nine combinations of orchards and years for any of the cultivars. When the entire data set for a cultivar was used to develop a single predictive model, the model was biased and underpredicted fruit weight for small fruit and overpredicted fruit weight for large fruit. Adding the ratio of (fruit weight/fruit diameter) at 60 days after bloom to the model with fruit diameter at 60 days after bloom produced a less-biased model with improved coefficients of determination, and predicted values were more similar to the observed values. The (fruit weight/fruit diameter) ratio was positively related to cumulative growing degree days for the 60 days before the fruit were measured and tended to be lower in years when fruits were exposed to frosts. These multiple regression models can be used to develop tables with predicted fruit weights at harvest for varying combinations of fruit diameter and (fruit weight/fruit diameter) ratio 60 days after bloom.