The viability of modern fruit production is dependent on a number of factors. Probably the most important one of these after site selection is that of orchrd design. The selection of suitable cultivator and rootstock combinations is the starting point for ongoing tree training and pruning which will continue for the life of the orchard. The days of large size fruit trees producing a tonne or more of each fruit are gone forever - a modern orchardist cannot afford to wait for the trees to grow very large, and the production costs of fruit on large, old trees is very high.