Excess vigour has been a problem on fertile soils under high rainfall in many cool climate regions of Australia. High and low vigour blocks were selected in vineyards of the cool climate regions of King Valley, Yarra Valley and Mornington Peninsula, Victoria. Laboratory incubations were carried out on soil samples to measure their N-mineralization potential (N0). A strong relationship was observed between N0 and soil total N concentration across all sites. Vine internode length measured between flowering and fruit set could be used as a index of vine vigour and was well correlated with N0, but petiole N concentration was not a useful indicator of vigour at these sites. Sometimes high or low vigour may be due to other factors such soil water supply and soil depth, so that when interpreting a site’s potential for vigour all key soil and climatic variables should be considered.
Authors: R. E. WHITE, L. BALACHANDRA, R. EDIS, and D. CHEN
School of Resource Management, Faculty of Land and Food Resources, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria 3010
Email: robertew@unimelb.edu.au
Keywords: excess vigour, internode length, N-mineralization potential, soil N