Articles
ACHIEVEMENTS IN APRICOT ORCHARDS MECHANIZATION
Because of the consumption increasing and also the yield fluctuations from year to year, the demands for apricot fruits have been never met by now.
The areas favourable to apricot culture are limited and very often the yields are diminished by the winter-spring frosts or by low temperatures during the blooming time.
Besides these negative aspects, the low trees density per ha, as a result of premature apricot decline, is also a cause for getting decreased yields.
Choosing the most favourable areas for apricot culture, the most resistant varieties to low temperatures and premature decline is a reasonable solution for the apricot culture development.
The standard orchards (with low density/ha) do not require too many pruning because the large spacing allow a continous enlargement of the trees canopy.
As soon as the new orchards with resistant varieties and high quality fruits are established it should be analized the culture system to be adopted.
It is known that in case of large distance between trees (7 × 8 m or more) the economical yield are obtained 6—7th year after planting and the full bearing period after 9—10 years.
A major factor that should be taken into account in choosing the culture system is the possibility to do mechanically the most difficult cultural practices : soil management, pests and disease control, herbicide application, pruning and harvesting.
In the large orchards — over 100 ha — it is a real problem to carry out in time all these cultural practices.
In such situations, if the main cultural practices are not mechanically done, constant yields of good quality fruits will not be obtained.
The standard orchards with a density of 200 trees/ha have showed a good behaviour under production conditions, allowing a complete mechanical soil management even if a special equipment was not used.
The treatments can also be applied well enough unless the trees are not too high and their crowns too compact.
For this orchard type, the mechanical harvest is required when the fruits are used for processing.