Here is the link,

To Grow Sweeter Produce, California Farmers Turn Off The Water

by Alastair Bland
August 28, 201310:20 AM

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/08/23/214884366/to-grow-sweeter-produce-california-farmers-turn-off-the-water

Thanks for that article. I learned something. Hadn't heard of using the technique with annual crops. But they are taking a huge yield loss. I would think they'd adapt deficit irrigation like I use in my greenhouse to maintain decent yield and still gain the benefits of higher sugars and flavor.

Apparently those annual crops are more drought tolerant than I thought.

Here is a link that might be useful: direct link to article

K-Mag do same thing and keep production weight. Sulfur needs to be low all input.

gator:

Do you have any proof of your claims? Any brix numbers of your own or from elsewhere. If it were as simple as some fertilizer I think that would have been widely know long ago.

It is an interesting article. It reminds me of what Fruitnut has been saying for years. Water is the enemy of most fruit.

I'm getting where I hate the rain. About 3-4 weeks ago we had a bunch of it. Cracked fruit, skin rot, diluted flavor in peaches.

It hasn't rained for several weeks and things have straightened out quite a bit. I'm back to selling top quality peaches, which makes a person feel good.

This will work for most fruiting type plants. I don't think turnips or collards would turn out right, or even okra and string beans.

I did university research on sugar beet for many years. The management factor that most affected extractable sugar was nitrogen. Not only did excess nitrogen lower sugar content it caused more of the sugars to be tied up in molasses. Irrigation amount only marginally affected percent sugar. And we had irrigation levels low enough to cut tons per acre in half.

The nitrogen effect was by making the cells bigger and increasing the water content. I'm still surprised looking back that irrigation amount didn't have more effect on brix.

So when I came to fruits in my greenhouse I wasn't really thinking about water as the primary factor in eating quality. But there seems more and more people coming to the same conclusion. Our friend from Iran says they have been doing it for thousands of years.