The influence of tree formation methods on development and placement of generative organs in apple orchard

Abstract

The experiment was carried out in a commercial orchard “Codru-St” Ltd. founded in 2000 with bench-graftings. Apple trees of the varieties Gala Must, Golden Reinders and Idared were grafted on dwarfing M9 rootstock. The distance of plantation between rows is 4.0 m, and between trees in the row is 1.0 m. There were studied 4 variants (method) of crown formation. From 2002 to 2006 were studied the quantity of bud-fruit formations, bud-fruit formation type, their located on different age branches and fruits location on different branches in dependence of slender spindle crown formation methods. It was established that on the studied varieties, the highest cumulated quantity of bud-fruit formations formed variety Gala Must 667-876 pcs and in function of crown formation in the variants with minimize of pruning degree at crown formation and design of 2 provisional horizontal branches through fixation on row direction were was established an increase of the 15-31% in comparison with control variant. At the studying varieties and methods of crown formation during 2003-2005 years the spurs share constitute 40-46%, the multi-annual spurs 38-45%, thorns and rods average 6-9%. Studying the investigated variants of crown formation, there were no significant differences in location of the bud-fruit formation on different branches. Location of the fruits on different age branches, as the bud-fruit formations is a hereditary characteristic of the variety. At the varieties of III type of fructification, grafted on M9 rootstock, the fruits mostly were located on the young branches with ages of 1-3 years. Investigation of the fruits and bud-fruit formations located on the different age branches permitted to recommend pruning degree of the fruit-bearing branches for maintaining the correlation between the growth and the fructification.