title: Direct coupling: a possible strategy to control fruit production in alternate bearing.
abstract: We investigated the theoretical possibility of applying phenomenon of synchronization of coupled nonlinear oscillators to control alternate bearing in citrus. The alternate bearing of fruit crops is a phenomenon in which a year of heavy yield is followed by an extremely light one. This phenomenon has been modeled previously by the resource budget model, which describes a typical nonlinear oscillator of the tent map type. We have demonstrated how direct coupling, which could be practically realized through grafting, contributes to the nonlinear dynamics of alternate bearing, especially phase synchronization. Our results show enhancement of out-of-phase synchronization in production, which depends on initial conditions obtained under the given system parameters. Based on these numerical experiments, we propose a new method to control alternate bearing, say in citrus, thereby enabling stable fruit production. The feasibility of validating the current results through field experimentation is also discussed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astrophysics, University of Delhi, Delhi 110007, India.
authors.forename: Awadhesh
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Prasad
authors.affiliation: Department of Environmental and Agricultural Engineering, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, Tokyo 183-8509, Japan.
authors.forename: Kenshi
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Sakai
authors.affiliation: Department of Environment Conservation, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, Tokyo 183-8509, Japan.
authors.forename: Yoshinobu
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Hoshino
mesh_terms: D002957:Citrus / Q000254:growth & development*; D018556:Crops, Agricultural; D005638:Fruit / Q000254:growth & development; D017711:Nonlinear Dynamics