Commercial blackberry producers use various types of trellising systems to support the canes and prevent damage from wind and added fruit weight. The objective of this study was to determine the fruit yield and quality with a new training and pruning strategy (cordon system) in a T-trellis system. The 2022-23 growing season was the first year of a two-year study to evaluate the conventional winter pruning and training strategy against a modified “cordon” training system, with the Prime-Ark® Traveler cultivar, at the Hampton Roads AREC in Virginia Beach, VA. The study was set up as a completely randomized design with two treatments and six replicates. Each replicate had 3 plants. The conventional pruning and training strategy involved leaving 4 to 6 main canes along with their laterals per plant. The cordon system had 2 to 4 canes pruned to the height of each trellis wire allowing two laterals per cane to extend horizontally along the wire in both directions. The intent was to distribute the fruit weight along the wires, making harvest easier. New primocanes were trained to the wires in the same manner after spent floricanes are removed. All winter pruning was done between 10 and 20 March, 2023. Fertigation was done as per standard extension recommendations. Harvesting was done two to three times per week beginning 30 May and ending 28 August 2023. Fruit yield was collected by replicate and fruits were categorized as marketable Grade 1, Grade 2 or nonmarketable. The nonmarketable fruits were recorded as having white drupelet disorder, diseases, and insect or “other” damage. Fruit size, firmness, total soluble solids (TSS) and pH data were collected on ten Grade 1 berries per harvest week and data were averaged for the season. Statistical analysis was done with two-sample t-test at alpha =0.05. The conventional training and pruning strategy had an overall higher total, marketable and nonmarketable yield. Fruit size was slightly smaller in the cordon system and no differences in firmness, TSS or pH were observed.
