APPLE QUALITY AS RELATED TO NUTRIENT STATUS OF ORCHARD

In 1987 researches were started in apple orchards of the hilly zone of Pavia district (Oltrepo Pavese), in order to characterize possible relationships between some fruit quality parameters and the mineral element contents noticed with the usual soil and leaf analyses.

In particular, it was possible to have 9 apple orchards with the Yellow spur and Cooper 4 cultivars and 1 with the only Cooper 4. So it was possible to have at our disposal 19 plots with plants grafted on seedling and MM 111 or MM 106.

The observations regarded:

1. the knowledge of the fruit nutrient status by

   • the analysis of mineral element content in the soil,

   • the leaf mineral composition, by sampling two times per year, that is at the beginning of June and at the beginning of August, using the usual sampling techniques;

2. the determination of some fruit quality properties after 5 months of cold storage, and in particular; average weight, skin colour intensity, pulp firmness, H/L ratio, soluble solids, and titratable acidity.

The investigations will have to go on for 5 years.
Data obtained in the first two years have pointed out only a few relationships between the fruit quality parameters and the mineral element content in the leaves sampled in each of the 2 periods considered.

In fact, of all the possible correlations noticed, only a few ones were significant at the lowest probability level (P = .05). The same result was obtained using data on soil mineral contents.

International Symposium on Diagnosis of Nutritional Status of Deciduous Fruit Orchards

V. Ughini

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.1990.274.62