PROTECT
Long Game Spur pruning a sound solution for pressured winter season SOPHIE PREECE
LONG SPUR pruning could be a useful stopgap measure for Marlborough vineyards this winter, says viticultural advisor Mark Allen, in a video guide created for the industry. “We know we are faced with a unique challenge as the wine industry grapples with the consequences of closed borders and fewer experienced return winter pruners,” he says. The numbers will be improved with summer workers on extended visas and locals taking up the opportunity, but there will be a reduction in skill levels, he adds. Combine the need for training with an increased minimum wage, “and it will lengthen the pruning time and cost to complete the region’s vineyards”. Mark has spent the past eight years running trials on several Marlborough blocks, assessing the efficacy and yields of spur pruning to various degrees, from the lightweight ‘mothball’ option - with a barrel prune and manual tidy up - right through to the ‘full monty’, where a vine is barrel pruned then manually tidied, decluttered and trimmed, retaining two long spurs in the head. He began the work in order to develop an alternative pruning system to the four cane one typically used in Marlborough, allowing for more mechanisation, possible AI assist and less labour requirement. And it’s an easier handson job, says Mark. “With this spur pruning method, the vine can be done by one person and it’s all cutting through one year wood - so far less physically demanding - and is set up in a very regimented pattern.” New Zealand Winegrowers, Wine Marlborough and the Bragato Research Institute commissioned the online guide to the pruning technique, with Mark demonstrating and discussing the potential future consequences of using spur pruning this season. In the video he discusses the importance of setting up one, two or three year cycles on the cordon, with long four-budded spurs. The buds are strategically placed along the cordon at 170mm to 200mm apart. The grower then ends up with the same bud number, if not slightly more, as they would have on a four cane vine, he says. “Fundamentally, you have the same number of buds, but you are putting them in a different place.” The new pruning system could be a stopgap measure
16 / Winepress May 2020
Mark Allen gives guidance on how to prune using the four-cordon, long-spur method. Photo Jim Tannock
“Fundamentally, you have the same number of buds, but you are putting them in a different place.” for a single year, with spurs left on the head of the vines for replacing canes the following year. “Then you just cut the cordons off next winter, which can easily be done with a Klima,” he says. “It’s very easy to go back to conventiontal pruning.” However, some growers may consider future proofing for labour shortages. “If you look outside winegrowing, at the likes of the apple industry, you see they changed their thinking from big free-standing trees, which are costly to manage and pick, to the trees they have now, which are 2 metres wide, 3m high, espaliered and regimented. It reduced their cost and enabled mechanised picking.” Spur pruning in Marlborough can create more of a problem with mealy bug, but a good spray programme should allay those concerns, he says. However, he does anticipate resistance from growers who don’t see cordon pruning as right for Sauvignon Blanc, and are worried about crop levels. “But if done properly, there is no impact on yield,” he says, referencing trials blocks in Central Otago, Nelson, North Canterbury and Marlbrough. “It needs to be looked at as an alternative simplified pruning system for now, and even a future strategy, because we know we can get the same yields, and it can be done quicker and for less cost than conventional Klima cane pruning.” The main motivation this season is the fact that it is so easy to teach and supervise, says Mark. “They don’t have to be that strong or that skilled. Its’ a very straight forward system”.
