Numerous logistical and biological factors potentially confound research on alternate bearing. It is challenging to collect yields of entire trees over long periods of time and thus most studies are restricted to four years and a limited number of trees are sampled (Crane and Iwakiri, 1986; Johnson and Weinbaum, 1987; Esmailpour, 2005), or data are aggregated across blocks of trees
(Ferguson et al., 1995).