EVALUATION OF THREE SWEET CHERRY CULTIVARS AND ONE SOUR CHERRY HYBRID ON DWARFING ROOTSTOCKS

The Research Institute for Fruitgrowing and Ornamentals has worked for more than half a century on stone fruit breeding in Hungary.
One of its important tasks is the breeding of sweet and sour cherry scion cultivars.
In connexion with this breeding the Institute also looks for promising cherry rootstocks.
An evaluation trial of these was planted in 1997. Eight rootstocks, Weiroot 13, Weiroot 53, Weiroot 72, Weiroot 154, Weiroot 158, P-HL-A, GiSelA 5 and Cerasus (Prunus) avium C. 2493 (bred by professor Nyujto at the Reseach Institute for Fruitgrowing in Cegléd) were chosen with Cerasus (Prunus) mahaleb ‘Cema’ (‘C 500’, bred in Cegléd) as control. Cerasus (Prunus) avium ‘F 12/1’ grew 10% stronger than Cerasus (Prunus) mahaleb ‘Cema’. ‘Germersdorfi 3’, ‘Linda’ and ‘Katalin’ sweet cherries cultivars and the sour cherry cv. ‘IV-2/152’ (Piramis) were grafted on the rootstocks.
The trial design consisted of 3 trees per treatment in 2 replications.
This trial was set up at two distinct locations; in South-Hungary at Zákányszék (near Szeged) and at Érd Elvira major, in the experimental field of the Institute.
Both trails were irrigated.
The preliminary observations on vegetative growth show significant differences.
The weakest vegetative growth was recorded on Weiroot 72 and GiSelA 5. The highest yield was recorded on trees grafted on GiSelA 5. The fruit diameter was homogenous among the sweet cherry cultivars except with the Linda/GiSelA 5 combination, where oversetting occurred, giving reduced fruit sizes.
Weiroot 53, Weiroot 72, Weiroot 158 and GiSelA 5 showed the best yields per tree volume ratio.

I International Symposium on Rootstocks for Deciduous Fruit Tree Species

G. Bujdosó

yield, fruit diameter, fruit weight, yield efficiency

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2004.658.15