USING ORGAN GROWTH POTENTIALS TO IDENTIFY PHYSIOLOGICAL AND HORTICULTURAL LIMITATIONS TO YIELD

For the last several years research in my laboratory has focused on identifying physiological and horticultural limitations to yield based on source-sink interactions and the concept that plants grow as collections of semi-autonomous but interacting organs.
This concept assumes that plant genotype, triggered by internal and environmental signals, determines current organ specific growth potentials and that environmental conditions specify conditional growth capacity and maintenance requirements (sink capacity) of each organ at a particular point in time.
The availability of resources for organ growth and maintenance (source capability) then interacts with the conditional growth capacity to determine the realized organ growth for any given time period.
In this paper I will discuss how this concept has permitted identification of periods during fruit development when fruit growth tends to be source-limited or sink-limited.
Furthermore the use of the concepts for studying how nitrogen and water stress affect fruit growth capacity and crop yield will be demonstrated.

IV International Peach Symposium

T.M. DeJong

peach, Prunus persica, fruit development, water stress, nitrogen stress, dry matter partitioning

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.1998.465.37