Investigation of Some Vegetative and Reproductive Characteristics of Five Apple Cultivars in ‘Guttingen V’ System

Abstract

Orchard intensification is motivated by the desire to produce fruit early in the life of the orchard to rapidly recover establishment costs. Intensification is possible using dwarfing rootstocks that control tree size, induce early cropping and produce large quantities of fruit compared to the amount of wood produced. Therefore, this study attempts to compare some yield and fruit properties of five apple cultivars grown in Karaj, Iran. The concerned apple cultivars were ‘Golab-kohans', ‘Fuji', ‘Starking', ‘Delbar estival' and ‘Gala' that were grafted on M.9 rootstock which were trained in‘Gutingen V' system. All trees were planted in winter 2005. The trees were irrigated since the second year after planting as drip irrigation. Results showed that ‘Golab-kohans' had the highest vegetative traits include TCSA (11.30 cm2), shoot growth (185.30 cm) and tree height (325.32 cm). Also‘Delbar estival' had the highest amount of yield / tree (6.2 kg), yield efficiency (1 kg/cm2) and fruit weight (147.52 g). ‘Starking' owned the highest fruit firmness (15.27 kg/cm2), dry matter (32.86 %) and ash (0.82 %). In addition, ‘Gala' had the most TSS (16.12), pH (4.02), fruit length (5.79 cm) and fruit diameter (6.68 cm). ‘Fuji' had the greatest L/D (0.89), TA (0.74 %) and fruit sunburn (56.23 %).