North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Moyer, Richard" <ramoyer@king.edu>]

Robert,
Here's some research from our neck of the woods:

Clemson reference:
from http://www.clemson.edu/ipm/reports/02schnabel.htm
Soybean Oil 
Soybean oil applications for the bloom delay results appear to be very
dependent upon the weather at the time of application. Bloom delay was
achieved in the BabyGold 7 orchard, while there was no difference in bloom
timing for the BabyGold 5s.

A second advantage that was observed with the soybean oil was the increase
in the fruit size. Fruit harvested from the soybean oil treated plots were
approximately two-tenths of an inch larger than those treated with the
traditional dormant oil. This is probably a factor of the early thinning at
the bud stage. This early thinning led to a third advantage, the reduction
of labor necessary to thin the fruit on the trees. This effect was observed
across both varieties. A fourth advantage were that the yields soybean oil
treatments was higher than those treated with the conventional dormant oil.
This too was seen in both varieties. 

U of Tenn references:
Pendergrass, R., R.K. Roberts, D.E. Deyton, and C.E. Sams. 2000. Economics
of using soybean oil to reduce peach freeze damage and thin fruit.
HortTechnology 10:211-217. 

Moran, R.E., D.E. Deyton, C.E. Sams, and J.C. Cummins. 2000. Applying
soybean oil to dormant peach trees thins flowers buds. HortScience.
35:615-619. 

Myers, R.E., D.E. Deyton and C.E. Sams. 1996. Applying soybean oil to
dormant peach trees alters internal atmosphere, reduces respiration, delays
bloom, and thins flower buds. J. Amer. Soc. Hort. Sci. 121:96-100. 

Robert wrote:
>Dormant oil to delay flowering? Did you just discover
>this by accident, or is this a common practice.  I
>would be curious to see if this works for other plants
>too.

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