Articles
Exploring pollen development to detect endodormancy breaking and determine chilling requirements in apricot cultivars
Article number
1450_34
Pages
263 – 268
Language
English
Abstract
Extreme climate warming is disrupting the adaptation of temperate fruit trees to climatic conditions in many traditional growing regions.
Rising temperatures, especially during the winter, cause phenology shifts that directly impact the reproductive biology of trees.
Phenomena such as bud abortion and scattered flowering are becoming more frequent due to the inadequate overcoming of dormancy resulting from insufficient winter chill exposure.
In this context, knowing the agroclimatic requirements of cultivars is of increasing interest to select appropriate cultivars in the design of new orchards.
However, the chill requirements remain uncharacterized for many apricot cultivars, limiting the suitable cultivar selection for each area.
One reason for this lack of information is the limitations of traditional methodologies for establishing the endodormancy breakdown, such as forcing experiments of shoots or statistical approaches relating phenological data with temperatures, which involve cumbersome experiments or large data sets of flowering dates, respectively.
Recently, the triggering of male meiosis has been linked to chill fulfillment in apricot, providing a new methodology to characterize the dormancy phases (endo- and eco-dormancy). This approach enables the determination of chill requirements based on a biomarker.
In this study, we have characterized the agroclimatic requirements of ten apricot cultivars by analysing flower buds collected weekly over two winter seasons.
We observed the anthers under the microscope to determine the phases of pollen development, relating them to the transition from ecodormancy to endodormancy.
The results showed that chill requirements ranged from 56 to 89 chill portions.
The availability of the chilling requirements of cultivars enables growers to choose those cultivars that are well adapted to the winter chill conditions in their region.
Rising temperatures, especially during the winter, cause phenology shifts that directly impact the reproductive biology of trees.
Phenomena such as bud abortion and scattered flowering are becoming more frequent due to the inadequate overcoming of dormancy resulting from insufficient winter chill exposure.
In this context, knowing the agroclimatic requirements of cultivars is of increasing interest to select appropriate cultivars in the design of new orchards.
However, the chill requirements remain uncharacterized for many apricot cultivars, limiting the suitable cultivar selection for each area.
One reason for this lack of information is the limitations of traditional methodologies for establishing the endodormancy breakdown, such as forcing experiments of shoots or statistical approaches relating phenological data with temperatures, which involve cumbersome experiments or large data sets of flowering dates, respectively.
Recently, the triggering of male meiosis has been linked to chill fulfillment in apricot, providing a new methodology to characterize the dormancy phases (endo- and eco-dormancy). This approach enables the determination of chill requirements based on a biomarker.
In this study, we have characterized the agroclimatic requirements of ten apricot cultivars by analysing flower buds collected weekly over two winter seasons.
We observed the anthers under the microscope to determine the phases of pollen development, relating them to the transition from ecodormancy to endodormancy.
The results showed that chill requirements ranged from 56 to 89 chill portions.
The availability of the chilling requirements of cultivars enables growers to choose those cultivars that are well adapted to the winter chill conditions in their region.
Publication
Authors
E. Fadón, T.I. Gheban, J. Rodrigo
Keywords
apricot, chilling hours, chilling portions, chilling units, dormancy biomarker, flower primordia, fluorescent microscopy, meiosis
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