The success of ventures involving commercial use of plants including fruiting plants involves risks. Risks arise as a consequence of many variables. These include inter alia, the weather, unexpected climatic variations, the quality of juvenile plants and timing of artificially induced events, such as planting in relation to anticipated seasonal events and so forth. Many of these variables cannot be quantified and where, for example, planting takes place too late or too early and say, anticipated seasonal changes do not occur as hoped, or adverse weather interferes with events, the yield from a crop can be adversely effected. A venture can become unprofitable.
It is known that yield can be improved in mature plants by a process known as pruning. While the yield of the pruned plant compared to the unpruned plant is increased, the yield is not necessarily maximised because the yield depends on the plant's recovery from pruning induced stress. Similarly, where juvenile plants are transplanted, particularly where commercial numbers are concerned, plant losses occur as some plants cannot recover from the transplanting procedure. Moreover, recovery rates in a transplantation can be slow and this in turn can also effect overall yield. These problems are exacerbated in the large scale commercial environment as a 20% or even 10% reduction in yield from year to year can mean the difference between profit and loss.
At present, conditions considered appropriate to application of induced stress such as pruning or transplanting are evaluated on a qualitative basis having regard to, inter alia, season and visual appearance of plants. The applicant has found that the latter test can be deceptive inasfar as assessing a plant's ability to withstand artificially induced stresses, particularly those associated with transplanting.