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Quantitative forecasting of olive yield in Northern Portugal using a bioclimatic model

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Abstract

In this work the objective was to develop a bioclimatic model to forecast olive yield based on airborne pollen, soil water content, and favourable conditions for phytopathological attacks. Olive airborne pollen was sampled from 1998 to 2006 using Cour traps installed in the Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro region, in the provinces of Valença do Douro and Vila Nova de Foz-Côa. Meteorological data from a meteorological station located in Pinhão, near the pollen samplers, was used to calculate other independent variables. According to the bioclimatic model, at the flowering stage 63% of regional olive production can be predicted from the regional pollen index, with an average deviation between observed and predicted production of 10%. The variable soil water content enabled an increase in forecasting accuracy of about 30%, and a reduction in the average deviation between observed and predicted production of 6%. The final regression with all three variables tested showed that the bioclimatic model was able to predict the annual variability of regional olive fruit production with an accuracy of 97%, the average deviation between observed and predicted production being 3% for internal validation and 6% for external validation.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge ADVID and Eng Paulo Costa for the meteorological data. The first author would like to thank the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia SFRH/BD/13148/2003 for support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Secção Autónoma de Ciências Agrárias, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Helena Ribeiro & Mário Cunha

  2. Departamento de Botânica, Faculdade de Ciências and Grupo de Ambiente, Sociedade e Educação do Centro de Geologia, Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Helena Ribeiro & Ilda Abreu

  3. Centro de Investigação em Ciências Geo-espaciais Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Mário Cunha

Authors
  1. Helena Ribeiro
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  2. Mário Cunha
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  3. Ilda Abreu
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Correspondence to Helena Ribeiro.

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Ribeiro, H., Cunha, M. & Abreu, I. Quantitative forecasting of olive yield in Northern Portugal using a bioclimatic model. Aerobiologia 24, 141–150 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10453-008-9094-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10453-008-9094-2

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