Articles
THE INFLUENCE OF THINNING AND TREATMENTS WITH CALCIUM CHLORIDE ON THE QUALITY OF McINTOSH APPLES TREATED WITH SADH
SADH was applied at a concentratione of 0.1% in the second half of July as protection the dropping of the fruits during harvest.
Half of the trees were thinned with NAA to check the influence of a limited number of fruits for their quality, and especially their size.
Some of the trees, sprayed and unsprayed with SADH, were treated with calcium chloride (by spraying the trees or by dipping the apples after harvest) to check the influence of such treatements on the storage quality of the apples, especially on the incident of physiological disorder – core flush.
It was found that SADH applied late in the vegetation season did not decrease the size of the apples but even increased the number of extra class apples.
The thinning increased the size of the apples both treated and untreated with SADH. The thinning improved the red coloration of apples untreated with SADH and calcium.
The SADH treated apples were better colored than the untreated apples and thinning often increased the number of well colorated apples too.
Calcium chloride limitted the core flush in apples treated with SADH but only in years when the apples showed worse storage ability than untreated apples.
In the other cases SADH reduced the number of apples with core flush if the fruits were treated with calcium chloride.
Apples treated with both SADH and calcium chloride showed the lowest ratio of K and Mg to Ca.