Effect of Fatty Alcohol and 6-Benzyladenine on Fruit Set and Fruit Quality of ‘Fuji’ Apples

Abstract

This study was investigated the effect of fatty alcohol (FA) and 6-benzyladenine (6-BA) thinning treatments on the fruit set and fruit quality attributes of 'Fuji/M.9' apples. Trees were treated with FA (single, ×500 dilution), FA (double), 6-BA (×1,000 dilution), 6-BA (×500 dilution), FA (single) + 6-BA (×1,000 dilution), FA (double) + 6-BA (×500 dilution), and carbaryl. FA (80.5% a.i.) treatment was applied at 80% blossom of terminal flowers and 60-80% blossom of lateral flowers, and 6-BA (7.4% a.i.) and carbaryl treatments were applied at 8-mm size of central fruit. The total fruit set rate per cluster was observed 61.0% for terminal flowers and 37.3% for lateral flowers in the control but it was decreased to 35.2-50.6% for terminal flowers and 9.7-23.8% for lateral flowers in the thinning treatments, respectively. The rate of central fruit per terminal flower cluster was observed 92.6% in the control but it was 65.2-94.4% in FA and 6-BA treatments. However, the rate of non-fruit set per terminal flower cluster was observed 2.9% in the control but it was increased to 7.5 -14.2% in the thinning treatments, and the rate of one fruit set per terminal flower cluster was 14.1% in the control but it was increased to 20.6-33.9% in the thinning treatments. In addition, the rate of non-fruit set per lateral flower cluster was observed 19.6% in the control but it was decreased to 32.2 -69.0% in the thinning treatments. The fruit quality attributes were not different in all treatment groups at harvest, except fruit weight. Therefore, our results reveal that FA and 6-BA treatments have the significant effects in reducing the fruit rate in 'Fuji' apple.

Influence of Mechanical Flower Thinning on Fruit Set and Quality of ‘Arisoo’ and ‘Fuji’ Apples

“…Apple trees are very productive; therefore, adjusting the crop load in trees is essential to achieve marketable quality fruit [1,2]. Flower thinning is a method of crop load management and manual (hand) and chemical thinning are the most widely used thinning methods in many apple orchards worldwide, including Korea [3][4][5][6][7]. However, hand thinning is time-consuming and can lead to increased production costs.…”