ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First, we acknowledge Shepherd College and the Office of Auxiliary Services for their willingness and assistance in providing the facilities for this symposium. We would especially like to thank Ms. Sharon Mason, Conference Coordinator, and her staff, particularly Mr. Dale Hunter, for his help in preparing the facilities and responding to our needs on short notice. Our thanks are also extended to Mr. Larry Dowdy, Coordinator of Media Services, Mr. Jack Castle, Director of Housing, and Mr. Brian Burkholder, Food Services, for their excellent assistance.

We owe thanks to those who served as session moderators for their work in organizing the session and serving as moderators during the Symposium: Dr. Don C. Elfving, Dr. David C. Ferree, and Dr. James A. Flore.

We express our thanks to Mr. Bill Scott, owner, his wife Barbara, and Mr. Dave Davis, Production Manager of Summit Point Raceway Orchards, Summit Point, West Virginia, for their hospitality and providing tours of their orchards and storage facilities.

We are grateful to the staffs of the USDA-ARS, Appalachian Fruit Research Station and West Virginia University Experiment Station at Kearneysville, West Virginia, and the USDA-ARS, Fruit Research Laboratory at Beltsville, Maryland, for their assistance in numerous phases of this symposium. We would especially like to thank Messrs. Larry Crim, Doug Humphreys, and Joe Eldridge, Appalachian Fruit Research Station, for their assistance in transportation, graphic arts, and assistance in the numerous small details that made this symposium a success. Our thanks to Dr. Tara Baugher, West Virginia University, and her staff, especially Kathy Funk, for assistance in registration and field tours. We gratefully acknowledge Francis Jacobs, Fruit Lab, BARC, Beltsville, Maryland, for assisting in providing transportation for the symposium attendees.

We wish to thank Ms. Barbara Brown for her assistance in editing and final typing of the manuscripts for this proceedings.

We are deeply indebted to Ms. Janice McMahan, Secretary to the Director, USDA-ARS Appalachian Fruit Research Station for her secretarial assistance throughout the planning, preparation, and conduct of the Symposium and assistance in preparing the proceedings.


Miklos Faust and Stephen Miller
(Conveners)


WELCOMING ADDRESS

It is a pleasure for me to extend to you the greetings of the International Society for Horticulture and its Fruit Section, which always finds new points of contact for joint cooperation with the American scientific community. Let me first thank Dr. Miklos Faust, Vice-Chairman of the ISHS Fruit Section and esteemed international scholar, and Dr. Stephen Miller, Director of the USDA-ARS Appalachian Fruit Research Station, for having organized this important conference here in the heart of the East Coast's fruit belt, and hasten to add that the significance of this Symposium goes even further in that the issues of pruning and training systems provide a common ground of interests linking Europe and North America.

The Symposium's agenda highlights topics that have returned to the forefront of the fruit industry with a certai clamor. This because intensive growing techniques have necessitated a redesign of orchards and training systems, including a revamping of pruning methods to enhance crop efficiency, yield and quality in purely economic terms and because these techniques are among the few that are not in contrast with the new directions of a sustainable, integrated agriculture that is compatible with environmental needs.

It is important in this connection not to forget the course of history and its recurrent themes. Training systems in Europe enjoyed marked notoriety in the royal gardens of France, Italy and Belgium in the 1600 and 1700's, as well as in the course of the 20th century, when a highly specialized, world-wide orchard industry developed specifically new systems tailored to the demands of each species and each country, and sometimes to each region within a given country. Pruning, which in the past was considered an art and/or a technique open to varying interpretations, should also be placed on a firm and accepted scientific basis. As the first century Latin author Columella put it, "he who manures his orchard beseeches it, he who tills his orchard prays to it, but he who prunes his tree induces it to bear fruit." And this is the reason that many of us are here today.

To have an understanding of pruning is to have sensitivity, experience, insight, for it involves anticipating the response of the plant, and that demands cognition and rapid decision-making: in other words, an unceasing comparative challenge at every cut, at every treatment. We are adult enough to have experienced in our professional lives in which, for lack of dwarfing rootstocks, of growth regulators, of knowledge about fertilizers and irrigation, and so on, pruning was almost all there was, the only way to control fruiting. Gradually, however, as our knowledge branched out into these other areas, pruning was a bit shunned, forgotten, pushed to one side, or even replaced by chemical or mechanical pruning, or very dwarf rootstocks that reputedly needed very little pruning. I can remember too that researchers studying pruning were ill-regarded, and their papers rejected at conferences because they were judged as being less than scientific. It is only with the advent of physiology and hormonal studies, and in the biphysics of nutrients and translocation, that the importance of certain pruning systems was understood.

Today the tern pruning itself has come to mean not just cutting, but a wide range of practices. Summer pruning, for example, has proven to be indispensable in guiding the plant throughout training, to avoid the negative consequences and bearing delays induced by cutting. Root pruning has proven to be a strong method to control canopy growth. Of course, there is no need to exaggerate by going from one extreme to the other. Let's just say that knowing how to prune means knowing which ends to pursue and how the plant will react. Thus, the unceasing debates about pruning are far from over, and there is no reason to suppose that everyone will reach the same conclusions. That would certainly be asking too much. But what can be asked is simply that we broaden our understanding, we reduce the doubts, and then let each one follow his or her appointed path.

Silviero Sansavini
Chairman ISHS Fruit Section