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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.

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The data on some phenotypic features of 40 population groups of Silybum marianum Gaertn, created on the base of seeds with different geographic origin during the field investigations in 1989-2006 in Samara region are given in the article. The problem of possible connection between morphological and quantitative, especially productivity-connected, parameters is 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.