Click Pruning for Apples

Feb 11, 2022

By Anna Wallis and Emily Lavely

apples — Series of photos illustrating click pruning cuts. Photo by Todd Einhorn, MSU.

What is click pruning?

Click pruning is a technique that was developed in the past two decades in Northern Europe. It has been further developed and promoted by Stefano Musacchi for type-4 and tip-bearing cultivars (acrotonic, or “D” in the figure below) that often present blind wood. Musacchi is the research pomologist with Washington State University (WSU) Tree Fruit Research and Extension Center in Wenatchee, Washington.

Musacchi also refers to click pruning as “tira savia.” In Spanish, this means “to pull the sap.” By pulling the sap flow to the end of the branch, you are driving vigor in a specific zone of the branch.

The main goals of click pruning are to control vigor and reduce blind wood. This helps promote spur development closer to the center of the tree. It is used often in high density pears, which are extremely vigorous and prone to blind wood. It is also very useful for some apple varieties, especially vigorous, tip-bearing varieties such as Fuji and Evercrisp.

When to use the click pruning technique

Click pruning is best for tip-bearing, type-4 cultivars and to reduce blind wood, directing fruit production closer to the center of the tree. Todd Einhorn, a professor in tree fruit physiology with Michigan State University Extension, summarized the best opportunities for using click pruning:

On young (1- and 2-year-old) trees when tight spacing, high vigor or renewal branching is needed.
When setting the terminal height of a tree that has limited subtending, weak wood.
On cultivars that have a class 4 growth habit, tip bear and produce upright and vigorous wood.
Where blind wood is an issue.
On very weak wood where vigor is needed. This could be the weak axis of a multi-leader, a weak axis of a spindle or a weak lateral branch.
At the base of multileader systems where vigor tends to be limiting.

How to click prune

Click pruning involves several steps. The main idea is to tip branches using a heading cut into 1-year-old wood. This causes the buds directly below to break and develop several new shoots. This drives sap flow to the shoot and feeds the branch below to promote fruit bud or spur development.

In year one, starting with feathered trees, begin with dormant pruning. Cut feathers back to a stub, as in a renewal cut.
Over the growing season, you will see several buds break and shoots develop.
In the next year, during dormant pruning, select the renewal shoot. Choose a horizontal limb, not too vigorous, and remove the others. Then, head or tip this shoot.
Over the next growing season, several buds will break and grow vegetatively. These shoots will fuel growth and induce floral bud or spur formation below to produce a crop in the following season.
Continue to use this technique in a three-year cycle, renewing branches. Renew in year one, tip in year two, and bear fruit in year three. Keep branches on the tree that are in each stage in order promote a crop in each year.

Source : msu.edu

Video: Why Your Food Future Could be Trapped in a Seed Morgue

In a world of PowerPoint overload, Rex Bernardo stands out. No bullet points. No charts. No jargon. Just stories and photographs. At this year’s National Association for Plant Breeding conference on the Big Island of Hawaii, he stood before a room of peers — all experts in the science of seeds — and did something radical: he showed them images. He told them stories. And he asked them to remember not what they saw, but how they felt.

Bernardo, recipient of the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award, has spent his career searching for the genetic treasures tucked inside what plant breeders call exotic germplasm — ancient, often wild genetic lines that hold secrets to resilience, taste, and traits we've forgotten to value.

But Bernardo didn’t always think this way.

“I worked in private industry for nearly a decade,” he recalls. “I remember one breeder saying, ‘We’re making new hybrids, but they’re basically the same genetics.’ That stuck with me. Where is the new diversity going to come from?”

For Bernardo, part of the answer lies in the world’s gene banks — vast vaults of seed samples collected from every corner of the globe. Yet, he says, many of these vaults have quietly become “seed morgues.” “Something goes in, but it never comes out,” he explains. “We need to start treating these collections like living investments, not museums of dead potential.”

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Bernardo practices what he preaches. At the University of Minnesota, he helped launch a student-led breeding program that’s working to adapt leafy African vegetables for the Twin Cities’ African diaspora. The goal? Culturally relevant crops that mature in Minnesota’s shorter growing season — and can be regrown year after year.

“That’s real impact,” he says. “Helping people grow food that’s meaningful to them, not just what's commercially viable.”

He’s also brewed plant breeding into something more relatable — literally. Coffee and beer have become unexpected tools in his mission to make science accessible. His undergraduate course on coffee, for instance, connects the dots between genetics, geography, and culture. “Everyone drinks coffee,” he says. “It’s a conversation starter. It’s a gateway into plant science.”