Hello crops. Stress and potential damage are on the way. We have some extreme heat conditions headed our way. We know what is going to happen. Our reactive oxygen species (ROS) will react and develop an imbalance. What we can expect from this abiotic stress can influence our production. If severe enough and left unchecked, we could even see death of the plant. Hopefully our crop advisors and managers recognize the potential problem and communicate with us.

First, they need to understand ROS and the negative impact it can have on the crop. This includes cellular damage at varying levels, some as severe as plant death and some as mild as damage that might allow the plant to survive but can cause poor-quality fruit, nuts or vegetables to develop. High ROS levels can damage cell membranes (lipid peroxidation), nucleic acids (DNA) and proteins, leading to cell dysfunction and potential death.

Oxidative stress can be caused by the imbalance of ROS production. This can negatively impact plant growth, development and survival. Damage this year from the heat could seriously reduce flowering and crop set in the next season. ROS target DNA, RNA, proteins and lipids, disrupting their functions and causing cellular damage. It might be so mild that we think we are having a good crop year. The fact is, even a slight impact can reduce yield and quality so our full potential cannot be achieved.

ROS act as signaling molecules. These signals trigger transduction pathways so we can respond appropriately to abiotic and biotic stresses. ROS also become involved in regulating plant development, cell division, differentiation and elongation. Cell division directly affects fruit and nut size, leaf size and even bud size. The process of cell differentiation has many key roles in our plant development. Meristematic cells at the tips of roots and shoots can reduce elongation so branches can be short or not grow. Interference in root hair tips can reduce our ability to take up adequate nutrients.

Imbalance can prevent structural change in our cells so we cannot produce stronger cell walls for tree limbs to support our crop load or perhaps reduce a wheat crop stem’s ability to withstand wind or water weight, so we lose production through lodging. Some altered and prevented cell differentiation might reduce water transportation, nutrient storage and our defense.

The Role of ROS in Photosynthesis, Gene Expression and Plant Defense
ROS can have both positive and negative impacts on photosynthesis. While excess ROS can damage photosynthetic components, they also play a role in signaling pathways that allow plants to acclimate to environmental changes and even serve as a form of protection against excess light. An excess of ROS could result in damage to the photosynthetic machinery. Damage to proteins, amino acid residues, lipid peroxidation and DNA could impair our efficiency, capture and electron transport.

ROS have positive roles such as chloroplast-nucleus signaling pathways. These pathways communicate changes in environmental conditions such as the high heat coming our way. They can signal high light stress and initiate our internal responses to protect ourselves. They are the trigger that signals pathways to allow us to acclimate to environmental stress like high light and drought. ROS communicate to us by modulating gene expression. We have defense mechanisms against biotic and abiotic stressors, including infections and pathogens.

Again, when this ROS balance is off it can seriously damage us. So how can our crop consultants help us? It is called communication. This communication can be achieved by a process called gene upregulation. In gene regulation, upregulation refers to an increase in the expression of a gene, leading to more protein production while downregulation refers to a decrease in gene expression, leading to less protein production. Essentially, upregulation “turns on” a gene while downregulation “turns off” a gene.

To explain, we have these examples: Increased expression is a higher level of transcription (RNA production) or translation (protein production) of a gene. More proteins are encoded by that gene. An upregulation can occur when a cell needs to produce more receptors to become more sensitive to a hormone. This can be triggered by signals within the cell itself or other cells as well as by environmental clues.

Downregulation involves lower levels of transcription or translation, which is the reverse of upregulation. Fewer proteins are therefore encoded. Now signals change so a decrease in production of receptors makes a cell less sensitive to that same hormone. Since the downregulation can be triggered by the same factors and the signals come from the same sources, upregulation and downregulation are two sides of the same coin.

Upregulation
• Purpose: Increases the production of specific proteins often in response to stress or specific signals to promote adaptation and survival.
• Examples: Plants may upregulate genes involved in defense against pathogens (like R-genes in tomato and potato) or stress tolerance (like those involved in cold or heat stress).
• Mechanism: Can involve increased transcription (the process of creating mRNA from DNA) or increased translation (the process of creating protein from mRNA) or both.

Downregulation
• Purpose: Decreases the production of specific proteins, often to reduce the intensity of a particular process or to conserve resources.
• Examples: Plants may downregulate genes related to growth or development when facing stress, such as drought or nutrient deficiency.
• Mechanism: Can involve decreased transcription or translation or both, or by affecting the stability of the mRNA or the produced protein.

Regulation and Examples
• Regulatory genes: Many genes are involved in regulating the expression of other genes. These regulatory genes encode transcription factors that can bind to DNA and either activate or repress other genes influencing their expression levels.
• Stress response: Plants respond to environmental stresses like drought, nutrient deficiency or pathogen attack by upregulating defense genes and downregulating genes related to normal growth and development.
• Example of specific gene expression changes (pathogen response): Studies on tomato and potato R-genes have shown that a large portion of R-genes are upregulated in response to pathogens, indicating a defense response.

A consultant could recommend a biostimulant to aid in gene upregulation. Biostimulants can upregulate specific genes in plants, influencing various biological processes. For instance, they can increase the expression of genes related to photosynthesis, nutrient uptake, stress response and growth-promoting factors. Some of the ways biostimulants work are:
• Hormone-mimicking actions: Some biostimulants mimic plant hormones triggering the upregulation of specific genes involved in growth and development.
• Enzyme/protein function regulation: Biostimulants can influence the expression of genes coding for enzymes and proteins involved in various metabolic pathways leading to increased activity of these molecules.
• Transcriptional regulatory pathways: Biostimulants can interact with transcriptional regulatory networks influencing the binding of transcription factors to DNA and activating the expression of specific genes. Biostimulants can upregulate genes involved in photosynthetic processes leading to increased chlorophyll content and photosynthetic efficiency. Alfalfa-based protein hydrolysates have been shown to upregulate genes involved in nutrient uptake, such as phosphate and nitrogen transporters. Biostimulants can upregulate genes involved in stress tolerance like those involved in antioxidant defense and osmoprotection, helping plants cope with adverse environmental conditions like drought or salinity. Biostimulants can increase the expression of growth-promoting genes, leading to enhanced plant growth and development.

Overall, biostimulants act as signaling molecules that modulate gene expression in plants leading to improved growth, stress tolerance and quality traits. They come in many different forms: acids, microbials, extracts and others. The message I am sending with this letter to crops is that there is help. Through communication within the plant aided by the outside influence of biostimulants, we can protect ourselves against abiotic stressors as well as biotic stressors.

Pruning is essential for sustaining orchard productivity, especially the yield of commercially valuable size (CVS) fruit. The main value of pruning is to open the canopy for light penetration. No light, no flowers, no fruit! Additionally, pruning allows for management of tree height and maintenance of space between trees and drive rows, thus facilitating harvest and pest control activities as well as promoting the rejuvenation of older trees. Finally, pruning to raise tree skirts may allow cold air to drain through the orchard and ensure that sprinklers are not wetting the low-hanging fruit, which may promote disease.

Pruning is also a well-known crop reduction tool for mitigating the negative effects of a heavy ON crop when alternate bearing (AB) occurs. Olive trees are prone to AB, production of a heavy ON crop one year followed by a light OFF crop the next. The ON crop is characterized by large yields with small size fruit that have reduced commercial value and typically mature late. Conversely, the OFF crop consists of large size fruit due to the low yield, which may not be cost effective to harvest. AB adversely affects the consistency of the fruit supply, thus having a negative economic impact on every step within the production chain from farm to consumer. Use of plant growth regulator sprays of naphthaleneacetic acid (NAA) or pruning to reduce crop load during the ON year have shown promise in evening out olive production from year to year. However, implementation of these strategies for optimal results has remained elusive. We previously reported that “Olive Yields Benefit from a New Strategy Using Naphthaleneacetic Acid to Manage Crop Load” in the November/December 2024 issue of Progressive Crop Consultant. Here we report the results of field research sponsored by the California Olive Committee to answer the questions of when, how much and how frequently to prune Manzanillo table olive trees to reduce alternate bearing and generate better cumulative annual yields of CVS fruit.

When to Prune for Maximum Impact?
Pruning of tree crops is typically carried out in the winter when orchard management requirements are minimal and trees are more or less dormant, resulting in minimal vegetative regrowth. However, pruning at this time is compromised by the lack of knowledge as to whether the upcoming spring bloom and fruit set will be ON or OFF. Delaying pruning operations until bloom allows growers to evaluate the current season’s yield potential and adjust pruning intensity accordingly. Further delay of pruning until after bloom enables growers to evaluate fruit set before reducing crop production on pruned sections of the tree. Because more than 98% of olive flowers do not set fruit, assessing the abundance of flower buds alone (Fig. 1a) is not a good predictor of yield in some years. Olives have two types of flowers: perfect flowers containing both female (pistil) and male (stamen) flower parts (Fig. 1b), and staminate flowers (Fig. 1c) containing only male flower parts. The ratio of perfect flowers to male flowers is determined several weeks prior to bloom when environmental stresses induce a fraction of the pistils to abscise. Note that the base of the pistil is the ovary, which develops into an olive fruit. Thus, only perfect flowers have the potential to bear fruit. Fruit set is also influenced by climatic conditions at bloom. For example, heat during bloom in Manzanillo orchards limits pollen development, resulting in reduced fertility. In seasons characterized by heat during bloom, shotberries (Fig. 2a) (parthenocarpic fruit, i.e., fruit forming without syngamy and thus without a seed, which never fully develop) may be prevalent in Manzanillo table olive orchards.

To mitigate the impact of the current ON crop on the successive year’s crop, fruit removal should be completed before pit hardening, a phenological stage that occurs in July. After pit hardening, the current season’s crop suppresses summer vegetative shoot growth (both the length and number of shoots that develop). This limits the number of nodes (points of leaf attachment) available for floral bud development for next spring’s bloom. Conversely, pruning cannot be delayed too late into the summer. Pruning stimulates the tree’s production of gibberellins, plant growth regulators that may inhibit the transition of vegetative buds to floral buds, a developmental event that is initiated in late August through mid-September. Pruning approximately 28 days after full bloom (i.e., early June) (Fig. 2b) prevents the suppression of in-season vegetative shoot growth caused by the ON crop and allows sufficient time for dissipation of gibberellins prior to the transition to floral buds.

How Much Pruning Is Just Right?
Pruning both sides of the tree and topping during an ON-crop year makes sense only if selective pruning is done to balance floral and vegetative shoots to sustain the yield of CVS fruit. For table olive, evidence suggests that mechanical pruning on two sides of the tree, especially with topping, in a single year might be too severe, converting ON-crop trees into OFF-crop trees and the ON year into an OFF year, which turns the following year into an ON year. An alternate approach with less impact on yield is to prune only one side of an ON-crop tree to generate ON (unpruned) and OFF (pruned) sides of trees (Fig. 3), allowing for mitigation of alternate bearing at the tree and orchard level.

How Often Should You Prune?
To address this question, field research was conducted with Manzanillo olive trees to evaluate the influence of pruning 28 days after full bloom to one side of the ON-crop tree and then the other, either annually (side 1 in year 1 and side 2 in year 2) or biennially (side 1 in year 2 and side 2 in year 3), on total yield, yield of CVS fruit and the severity of AB over two ON/OFF cycles (four years). For each two-year ON/OFF cycle, ABI was calculated for total yield and yield of CVS fruit: ABI = (year 1 yield – year 2 yield)/(year 1 yield + year 2 yield), in which yield is kilograms of fruit per tree and the difference in yield between years 1 and 2 is expressed as an absolute value.

Starting with an ON-crop year, severity of AB for the ON-crop control trees in this research, based on alternate bearing index (ABI) where 0 equals no AB and 1 is complete AB (crop one year, no crop the next), was 0.94 for total yield. Pruning one side of the tree and then the other side annually reduced ABI 24% to 0.72, whereas pruning one side of the tree and then the other biennially reduced the ABI 50% to 0.47. There was no significant difference in four-year cumulative total yield across treatments. Taken together, the results indicate that for each year of the four-year period, total yields of trees pruned biennially were more uniform than trees pruned annually or not at all. More uniform annual total yields improve the economics of all steps in the supply chain from farm to consumer.

Yield of CVS fruit was determined only for the last three years of the experiment. Annual pruning of one side of the tree and then the other increased three-year cumulative yield of CVS fruit by 58% (a net increase of 25 kg per tree) and reduced ABI by 24% (ABI = 0.61) compared to the untreated ON-crop control trees (ABI = 0.80). In contrast, biennially pruning one side of the tree and then the other resulted in 2.7 times more CVS fruit (a net increase of 73 kg per tree over three years) and reduced ABI 54% (ABI = 0.37) compared to the ON-crop control trees over the same period. The increased and more uniform annual yields of CVS size fruit obtained with biennial pruning provide growers with greater, more reliable annual revenues. The results demonstrate the value of a year-long rest period between pruning events for achieving better economic returns in table olive orchards. We previously reported that the year of rest between biennial applications of NAA to one side of Manzanillo olive trees and then the other also increased yield of CVS fruit and reduced ABI compared to annual NAA treatment (“Olive Yields Benefit From a New Strategy Using Naphthaleneacetic Acid to Manage Crop Load,” Progressive Crop Consultant, November/December 2024).

Optimizing the pruning approach taken to manage crop load has significant potential for mitigating alternate bearing in table olive orchards and increasing yield of CVS fruit and grower income. Pruning 28 days after full bloom allows for fruit removal before suppression of the following year’s crop and gives growers an opportunity to evaluate fruit set prior to making cuts that will limit the current year’s production. The year without pruning reduces the cost of the biennial pruning strategy by 50% compared with annual pruning. To further reduce pruning costs, growers could opt to prune one side of the trees on either side of a drive row and then skip the next drive row to leave the other side of two rows of trees unpruned. This technique would facilitate orchard access in unpruned rows until woody debris is mowed and might reduce the costs of mowing by limiting the area serviced by the mower.

Results demonstrate the potential horticultural and economic value of this new approach to pruning table olive trees at 28 days after full bloom on one side of the tree and then the other biennially for evening out crop load to reduce AB across years and improve cumulative yield of CVS fruit over multiple years. The improved efficacy of pruning (or applying NAA) biennially is currently being tested for reliability in a second experiment in a new commercial orchard.

As a professional crop consultant, you leverage your education, training, experience and insights to assist your clients to improve their productive efficiency, mitigate production risk and thereby improve profitability of their businesses. But what about your business? You spend innumerable hours working in your business, but what do you spend working on your business?

For crop consultants, success extends far beyond the field’s edge. While expertise in agronomy, pest management and soil science is the foundation of the profession, a robust business plan is an essential framework that transforms technical knowledge into a thriving and resilient enterprise. A well-conceived business plan serves as a critical roadmap, guiding consultants from a mere practice to a professional operation, ensuring long-term viability and growth in an increasingly competitive agricultural landscape.

A comprehensive business plan does more than simply outline goals and objectives; it provides a clear and actionable strategy for achieving them. For a crop consultant, this blueprint is instrumental in navigating the unique challenges and opportunities of the industry, from the seasonality of work to the imperative of staying at the forefront of agricultural technology. It should be a living document, regularly reviewed and updated. Its core components should be tailored to the specific nuances of providing agronomic advice and services.

1. Defining Your Value Proposition: More Than Just Advice
At the heart of any successful business is a clear understanding of the value it provides. For a crop consultant, the value proposition goes beyond simple recommendations. It’s about demonstrating a tangible positive net return for the farm client. A strong business plan will articulate this clearly. Are you focused on maximizing yield, optimizing input costs, promoting sustainable practices or a combination of these? Your value proposition should clearly answer the question, “Why should a grower hire you over another consultant or even merely relying upon their own knowledge?” This section of the plan should detail the specific outcomes and benefits clients can expect.

2. Services Offered and Specialization
The business plan must meticulously outline the services provided. This could range from basic soil sampling and analysis to comprehensive, year-round crop management programs. Consider creating tiered service packages to cater to different farm sizes and needs. This section should also address any areas of specialization. Do you have expertise in a particular crop, irrigation management, precision agriculture technologies, regenerative agricultural practices or organic certification? Highlighting a niche can be a powerful differentiator in the market.

3. Market Analysis and Client Acquisition
A thorough understanding of the target market is crucial. The business plan should identify the types of farms and growers you aim to serve. What is the acreage, crop type and technological adoption level of your ideal client? Furthermore, this section needs a detailed client acquisition strategy. How will you reach potential clients? This could involve:
• Networking: Build relationships with local growers, agronomists and industry suppliers.
• Digital presence: Create a professional website and use social media to share valuable content and testimonials.
• Referrals: Develop a system to encourage referrals from satisfied clients.
• Thought leadership: Speak at local agricultural events or write articles for trade publications.

4. Operations and Technology
How will you deliver your services efficiently and effectively? The operational plan should detail your periodic activities, including scheduling, data management and reporting to clients. A critical component for the modern crop consultant is the integration of technology. Your business plan should outline your strategy for utilizing farm management software, drone technology, sensor data and other precision agriculture tools. This not only enhances the quality of your recommendations but also demonstrates a commitment to innovation.

5. Financial Projections and Strategy
A solid financial plan is the ultimate measure of a business’ health. This section should include:
• Startup costs: If you are just beginning, detail the initial investment required for equipment, software, insurance and marketing.
• Pricing structure: Clearly define your fees, whether they are on a per-acre, hourly or project basis.
• Revenue forecasts: Project your income based on your target number of clients and service packages.
• Expense budget: Account for all potential costs, including vehicle maintenance, software subscriptions, professional development and insurance.
• Cash flow management: Address the seasonality of income and plan for periods of lower activity.

The Tangible Benefits of a Well-Laid Plan
The effort invested in creating a comprehensive business plan yields significant returns for a crop consultant. It provides a clear sense of direction, transforming a passion for agriculture into a structured and profitable business. A well-articulated plan is also an invaluable tool for securing financing from lenders who want to see a clear path to profitability and risk management.

Ultimately, a business plan empowers crop consultants to be proactive rather than reactive. It allows them to anticipate market trends, identify new opportunities and make informed decisions that will not only benefit their own bottom line but also contribute to the success and sustainability of the growers they serve. In an industry defined by constant change, a solid business plan is the steady hand that guides the modern crop consultant toward a prosperous future.

But developing and implementing a comprehensive business plan is not commonly loaded into a crop consultant’s skills toolkit. How does a crop consultant get this mission accomplished or where can they acquire the needed skills? There is commercial interactive software available to assist in stepping through the processes. There are agricultural consultants that specialize in business development and business management. Check out the directory of the American Society of Agricultural Consultants. There are options for professional training in this area. A firm of which I am a co-founder (MACS Academy LLC) offers a course, Agricultural Consulting Practice Management, which covers business plan development among several pertinent topics. Choose the path that best fits you/your business.