There are two main berries sampling strategies used among experiments to investigate sugar, and other quality parameters, response to different treatments (irrigation , nutrients, defoliation, etc.): one is to harvest all treatments on the same date and the other is to harvest each treatment when a targeted sugar concentration is reached. This differences in strategies usually results in different conclusions on same treatment effect. Which one is correct/better?
When to harvest different treatments is a relatively common question in viticulture. The best approach depends entirely on what question you're trying to answer. In particular it depends on the management decisions you are trying to inform. In the simplest situation, you would only be concerned about whether your treatment slows down ripening. In that case you might as well harvest on the same day.
At the other extreme, if you are testing whether the ideal quality is being affected, it would be appropriate to sample whenever that treatment reaches its optimum. The different harvest dates are necessary because the wine grower using a particular treatment would harvest the entire vineyard when it reached the best conditions for that particular treatment. The latter is also applicable in all of those situations where you might ask whether the yield can be increased without reducing the quality.
Thus, neither approach is inherently correct. The one that is better is the one that is the most relevant to how the information would be used by the producer.
I ask this because dominant approach is “same date harvest” for both types of researches, and I think that in very few cases authors are aware of this or warned by the reviewers (this should be pointed out in discussion).
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