Full flowering phenology of apple tree (<i>Malus domestica</i>) in Pūre orchard, Latvia from 1959 to 2019

Abstract

Abstract. The Pūre orchard is one of the oldest apple orchards in the Baltic, where thousands of varieties of fruit trees from throughout the world are grown and tested. Over time, a huge knowledge base has been accumulated, but most of the observational data are stored in archives in paper format. We have digitized a small part of the full flowering phenological data of apple trees (Malus domestica) over the period of 1959 to 2019 for 17 varieties of apple trees, a significant step for horticulture and agricultural economics in Latvia. Climate change has led to significant changes in the phenology of apple trees as all varieties, autumn, summer and winter, have begun to flower earlier: from 2002 to 2019, on average full flowering was recorded to have taken place around 21 May, whereas for the period 1959–1967 it occurred around 27–28 May. To develop better-quality phenological predictions and to take account of the fragmentary nature of phenological data, in our study we assessed the performance of three meteorological data sets – gridded observation data from E-OBS, ERA5-Land reanalysis data and direct observations from a distant meteorological station – in simple phenological degree-day models. In the first approximation, the gridded E-OBS data set performs best in our phenological model.