The concept of ecosystem services, which has been developed over the past 20 years in foreign and native scientific literature, is to a different extent specified in relation to various types of ecosystems. A relatively new approach is its application to orchards as important components of human agricultural activity. The ecosystem functions they perform as regards to the volume and implementation effectiveness depend on the regional soil and climatic conditions and the technologies used. For the Samara Region, this problem is considered for the first time. Trends associated with the dynamics of the fruit and berry plantations area in the Russian Federation are discussed, including general indicators decrease simultaneously with the intensive orchards growth. At present, the Samara Region is significantly ahead of neighboring regions in the gardens area, with their minimum area in the Ulyanovsk Region. Other territorial units belonging to the Middle Volga horticultural province of the Saratov Region such as republics of Tatarstan, Bashkortostan possess significant areas occupied by the gardens. In addition to large horticultural farms, the cultivation of fruit crops in the Samara Region is widespread among the local population. Horticultural agrocenoses of industrial and individual kinds, participating in the implementation of ecosystem services do it differently not only because of their different area scale. The authors explain this provision with examples related to specific groups of ecosystem services. The main target ecosystem service, growing of fruits, in terms of assortment and volume in the Samara Region is supplied to a greater extent at the expense of the individual orchards of the population. Agrotechnical features, implying large-scale treatment of industrial gardens with chemicals, pose a greater risk of environmental pollution. A greater variety of cultivated crops, varieties and organisms trophically associated with them as well as less intensive chemicalization level provide the gardens of the population with a leading position in the conservation of biological diversity, both natural and cultivated.

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The paper deals with the peculiarities of the biological characteristics of the most important fruit crops of temperate climates - apple and pear (Rosaceae family, subfamily Maloideae), taking into account the world, national and regional cultivation. Both cultures are characterized by significant food and commodity value, have some differences in the chemical composition of the fruit, including the leading components of the mass and biologically active substances, which determine the peculiarities of their use in the human diet. In both global and national fruit-growing, pears play a secondary role compared to apple, giving way to the number of varieties, the volume of production and the areas occupied. Based on the analysis of available statistical data of the FAO database, the dynamics of changes from 1990 to 2016 of the world production of apple and pear fruits with visualization on the continents, identifying world leaders and major trends are considered. For the USSR (from 1962 to 1990) and in Russian Federation (from 1992 to 2016) the paper presents a picture of changes in the volume of fruit production, discusses the status of fruit production in the country. The features of the historical development and current state of fruit growing in the Samara Region and prospects are discussed.

The leaves of higher plants reveal a wide range of structural and ecofunctional differences expressed for taxa of various ranks, for representatives of ecological groups, as well as associated with adaptation to a complex of biotopic conditions. Among the quantitative indicators determined in the study of leaf phytomass samples there are some detected by direct measurement and others detected by calculating. The second group of indicators includes, in particular, the leaf mass per area (LMA) parameter. In nature, this indicator reveals differences within two orders for plants of various life forms (from the minimum in freshwater hydrophytes to the maximum in desert inhabitants). Functional groups of plants are characterized by unequal level of LMA plasticity in the gradient of abiotic conditions (such as light, temperature, moisture, edaphic regime). Evaluation of leaf apparatus parameters is widely demanded in various actual directions (plant ecology, forestry, environmental protection, cultivars study, etc.). In this paper we present some generalized data related to the results of the study of the leaf structure for some fruit and berry Rosaceae cultivars and hybrids (25 varieties of pears, 15 - apple, 13 - garden strawberries, 7 - clone rootstocks for stone fruit crops), for which the Scientific Research Institute Zhigulevskiye Sady specialists carry out cultivars study. We performed a row ranking procedure and constructed distribution histograms for the integrated data blocks for each group of objects, using the Excel. We turned to the percentage of the proportion of variables corresponding to different levels of LMA. The distribution analysis of generalized data on the LMA index showed perspectivity for comparing groups of objects of different systematic (varietal) accessories and for detection of dissimilarity trends between them.