Many concept maybe used in pitaya off-season production, but we need a cheap, stable, and easy to use method in commercial orchard.
Strategy (1): Night-break by illuminating
Please to refer to this article “Pitaya off-season production in Vietnam.”
http://tw.myblog.yahoo.com/pitaya-house/article?mid=3501&sc=1#3512
Strategy (2): Used chemical medicine ex. Cytokines
Khaimov and Mizrahi (2006) point to 50 and 100 mg/l CPPU [N-(2-chloro-4-pyridinyl)-N-phenylurea] promoted precocious flowering and increased total floral bud yield in Hylocereus undatus. 100 and 500 mg/l GA3 treatment has opposite result.
According to my knowledge, the farmers used special chemical medicine to induce floral bud break in Thailand and Vietnam.
In my experience, 5-7 days after applied this chemical medicine could induce floral bud burst in the “right season and right areole”. Otherwise, it will sprout.
In practice, this method with a problem it needs remove spine and applying a drip medicine on the areole. So that, the operating speed was slow.
Fruit was malformation especially on scale. The amount of medicine need to control.
Strategy (3): Breeding new cultivar
I agree with the opinion ‘off-season fruits can be produced by breeding hybrid varieties’ proposed by Ariel. This is the complete solution about pitaya off-season production.
In my experience, the parent with Selenicereus megalanthus, and the hybrids early and delay flowering period about 1 month. In addition to, fruit growth need more time and harvested in the off-season.
Breeder get hybrid parent with H. costraicensis, and it could early and delay flowering period about 1 month in Taiwan.
In Vietnam, Dr. Chen got a superior red flesh pitaya variety, it self-compatibility, big fruit, year round production without any forcing cultural practice.
The appearance of shoot, flower, and immaturity fruit look like white flesh pitaya.
We should breed more variety and rich the fruit diversity for commercial produce in pitaya.