The effects of early shoot pinching and girdling on secondary scaffold branches at 13 or 31 days after full bloom on the berry enlargement and the quality of ‘Fujiminori’ grape clusters which flowers tinned from different positions. The girdling treatment at 13 DAFB promoted the berry elongation of clusters which flowers thinned from either positions, thus increased the cluster weight. Moreover, the girdling treatment at 31 DAFB increased the sugar content. Conversely, no effects of the timing of the shoot pinching treatments on the berry enlargement. These results indicated that the girdling treatments at around two weeks after full bloom enlarged berries in either clusters which flowers tinned from different positions and so may lead to the consistent production of large-sized berries in ‘Fujiminori’ grape.

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Pasture renovation is known to be able to limit radioactive cesium absorption by grass. However, on sloping pastures, the machine tilling that is necessary for pasture renovation is often difficult. To address this problem, we selected a radio-controlled power tractor with a 49.3 kW engine that achieves high traction on sloping areas due to a crawler-type running device, and we developed an experimental rotary tiller of 1.6 m in working width that can be attached to the tractor. To determine this tractor-tiller combination’s tillage performance on sloping pasture, we conducted the tilling in three directions: along the contour line, up the slope, and down the slope on 15° and 25° sloping pastures. We measured the crawler slippage, the number of engine revolutions, and the soil pulverization. The results revealed that under tilling conditions at the working speed of approximately 0.45 m/s and a tilling depth of 6–9 cm, regardless of the traveling direction, the engine output power was sufficient, and no tractor instability due to crawler slippage was observed. Our findings thus indicate that the experimental rotary tiller attached to the crawler tractor provided high pulverization and that this combination can be expected to successfully perform pasture renovation for the remediation of grass.

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[in Japanese]

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